


Propagating Structure

by oneinspats



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Krennic lives, M/M, there are plots, things happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:19:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 62,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/pseuds/oneinspats
Summary: Krennic survives Rogue One but there is trouble yet in the empire. Namely, one Wilhuff Tarkin whose face he'd really like to punch. Also, potential treason and coups and plots. But mainly, Tarkin's punchable face.





	1. Prologue: Inertia

As a child Krennic once read that nothing enjoys the process of entropy although it is unavoidable and the ultimate fate of everything including the universe. The universe most especially. Of course being hit with a laser from a machine of your own (mostly your own) creation is another level of something-literary-that-he-forgot-along-the-way entirely. Inertia is the end goal. Regardless of the means of getting there. Inertia. Nothing likes that either. 

He had wondered about inertia at school and later, after school and working, because nothing is truly inert. Things making up things, all those atoms, quarks, electrons, gluons and on and on are moving. Are not inert. The space between space is not inert. But once the universe has expanded beyond its ability to expand and that foretold heat death occurs will things be inert? 

Not that any of them will be around to witness and document. This wondering had led him to writing a paper on the subject which in turn meant too many bottles of wine and too many obtuse, recursive conversations about plausibility and red shift and the makeup of dark matter and Freidman equations with Erso and other colleagues. Back when there had been time for all of that and then time had run away from them and there wasn’t any left and it felt like he could never stand still because things kept slipping away from him. 

His mother, Esma, had asked why he had left academia for the military and he did not have an answer beyond ‘academia is inertia’ which she had not really understood and truthfully it is a bit of a cop-out answer but he has become very good at cop-out answers. His father, Nial, had never understood anything about his son so never really asked. 

All of this to say his shoulder hurts like a bitch and he hates bacta tanks. The mask makes breathing a conscious endeavour. You become aware of the pattern of breath and how the decompression of your lungs feel and ribs shifting against skin and your heart beat in your head and your chest. Also, he hates tubes and needles which makes sick bay a nightmare and him a nightmare to sick bay staff. 

Regaining consciousness. He forces himself to keep his eyes close and to tamp down the panic of being submerged but breathing. Being able to feel the IVs disconcerts him. He wants to pull them out but the thought of them exiting makes him shake as much as the thought of them being inserted. To calm himself he decides to replay what he can remember from the last twenty-four hours going backwards as best as he can manage. So, Scarif and some rebels and the plans and Erso being more of a traitor than he had ever expected him to be and Tarkin snarling like a wounded pit-bull and Vader and demotion threats and promotion offers and oh yes the beauty of the obliteration of Jedha. 

Really, he thinks, I did a damn good job with this monster of a station. He runs the numbers of size and the 1.7 million people plus over 400,000 drones it can hold not to mention ships and goods and transport and rehabilitation operations that are possible. On top of that, the sheer destructive capability. He also likes the design. It’s a break-away from his previous work in aesthetic but he feels that it successfully captures the rejuvenation of the Empire, the ability to change and morph to fit the times yet maintains the message of stability. 

 

  
A moon that neither waxes nor wanes. He had watched it turn towards Scarif. He remembers this. How he had almost died by moonlight in the middle of the day. He hates it and wants to punch fucking Tarkin in the face.

 

 

.  .  .

.


	2. Chapter 2

The obliteration of the station on Scarif was, perhaps, a bit too enthusiastic a reaction. Tarkin admits this now that the dust has settled and, on the planet, the earthquake tremors caused by the Death Star beam have died down and it’s only reactionary tsunamis left to terrorize beaches and water-level land. These are unimportant to him since the main imperial operations are no longer there to suffer the consequences.

He had explained to the council that yes, he had checked that all files were backed up and that the archives were still accessible in both physical and cloud-based formats. Yes, he had checked that. Twice. Three times, actually. He has a message chain pertaining to it if they would like to read it. He also wants to point out that according to the flow-chart pertaining to the chain of command both in the broader empire, as well as on board the Death Star, this entire council meeting is not following protocol.

It feels like a persecution and an entirely unwarranted disregard for the proper chain of command. It is not Wilhuff Tarkin who is summoned to meetings. He sits back in his chair and decides to rely on his reputation to see him through this storm. Most everything that happened in the last little while can be shifted onto Krennic’s shoulders, if it wasn’t resting their already. As for the destruction of the archival base on Scarif? Unfortunate but necessary.

One of the councillors, Admiral Wilken, leans forward and presses his hands against the table. ‘The emperor would like answers concerning the entire Death Star project as well as the recent slip-ups regarding missing information. Seeing as the Death Star is under your command-’

If others around the table shift in discomfort Tarkin barely registers it. So, he thinks, this is the point of the meeting. A new dog sniffing after potential power. Wilken has a face that reminds him of carrion. This is fitting. 

‘I think you will find that I was merely monitoring Director Krennic. This situation is the exact reason the emperor sent me here. He felt that, as talented as the Director is, he was not cut out for this position and the stress of it was causing him to lose sight of the details.’

‘Be that as it may, and we will arrange for the Director to address his failings as soon as he has made a full recovery, we here feel that you are perhaps… you have served the empire for the entirety of its existence - and we have many talented officers -’

Tarkin holds a hand up. ‘Thank you, Admiral. I know what drivel you are about to unleash onto everyone’s poor ears here. You are going to say that I am perhaps past my prime, should I think about taking up some gardening, spending time with my family - which euphemism for early retirement and being forced from my command were you going to pick? Shameful, Admiral.' And risky, he thinks. If not suicidal. 'Blame will rest with the proper source. I maintain my command of the Death Star, this attempted usurpation, I feel that coup is too worthy a word for what this poorly handled power grab, will not be forgotten. This meeting is over I believe, unless anyone else has something to add? No? Excellent. We will reconvene at our usual time to discuss clean up on Scarif and will liaise with the Admiralty regarding replacing ships.’

 

Despite that it was _he_ who was summoned, and not the council, Tarkin is pleased with the ending for although this attempted power-play was clumsy (and he winces internally to think of it) it speaks to an evident vacuum in the Death Star that must be filled. Once alone in the council room Tarkin exhales, taps the arm of the chair and looks out the window to the expanse of space. If it he recalls his orientation correctly he is looking towards the Alderaan quadrant. A nebula, the Triton, extends out and is shades of yellow and green. Descending is a rare peaceful moment when Tarkin allows himself to briefly relax.

Exhausting. That is what the last twenty-four to forty-eight have been. Exhausting. From doing Krennic-related damage control, in itself a full-time job and one that no human would ever be paid enough to do, to negotiating internal politics and keeping the emperor informed and content about the progress of the Death Star it never seems to end. And then, on top of it, this what? This pathetic, paltry, _insipid_ attempt to have him relieve himself of his own command. Even Krennic could do better than that. Or, failing his snake-oil schemes, would just be open and blunt. But this. No, this is sad and exhausting.

Pulling out his tablet he sends a request to speak with the emperor at his earliest convenience. A meeting request time pops up and he accepts think it best to get this sorted as soon as possible. The next order of business is the never ending ‘damage control’ portion of his job concerning a certain engineer. He agrees with the council that something obviously must necessarily be done. Demotion is certainly in order. He contemplates dishonourable discharge but discards it. Krennic, although unpredictable and not a little mad, is intelligent and clever and therefore can still be of use to the empire. It’s just keeping him on a short enough leash where he stops shooting himself, and everyone around him, in the metaphorical foot that is the issue. Hopefully a steep enough demotion will cull the thus-far untampered, naked ambition. Even if it is for a short time it will give Tarkin breathing room to then turn his attention more fully to the rebellion. 

Returning to his office there is the usual deluge of post-battle paperwork made worse by the sheer mountain of a mortality rate on Scarif and in the airspace above. The destruction of the Star Destroyers, although not complete, still resulted in the loss of over twenty thousand good officers, soldiers and staff and of those twenty thousand many of the best naval officers of the empire were lost which is an even harder loss to replace, although not one directly within his purview. The list of the few of high enough rank and esteem to deserve a letter of condolence from more than just the Admiralty is on his desk.

Reading through only two of the names are familiar enough to him where he can place name to face without referencing the database and decides to write those first then the others later. Replacing crew of one Star Destroyer is difficult enough as fifty thousand men and women willing to leave their families and endure the rigours of military life for years at a time who are also reliable and worthy of the employment are hard enough to find and train, let alone when you begin to double and triple that number in damage. Twenty thousand, that is a mercifully low number considering what it could have been. He had stopped doing the math around the consumption of life for both republic and empire years ago. It is too much, sometimes, even for him who does not find most things ‘too much’, to sit down and parse the numbers.

They are extraordinary, though. The sheer amount. Ten years ago he had them run the total loss of life for him and the need for the empire to expand in order to continue to recruit soldiers and find taxable sources begins to encroach on that of the republic. Even though they command planets and star systems upon star systems it does beggar the mind upon occasion. But, this is not an area of comparison he cares much about. All militarized governments result in mass death and a non-militarized government has yet to exist and work properly. Until such time as the answer to bloodless peace in the galaxy is found (an answer Tarkin personally thinks is nonexistent) there remains two choices for stability: Republic and Empire. Thus far, the Empire is proving the more stable of the two. A fact that does not shock him.

Finishing the letters for the two known officers he pulls up the list again and as he brings up the file on the first unfamiliar to him the screen in his office turns on as the office of the emperor connects in.

‘Grand Moff,’ the emperor greets. Tarkin cannot see him for the shadows and difficult lighting but the voice is recognizable anywhere. ‘I am hoping you have good news for me, Wilhuff.’

Tarkin thinks, The most annoying man in the military is speechless in a bacta tank for the next day? That’s good news. ‘We have secured Scarif and regained control on this quadrant from the rebels. We also dealt them a firm blow. They will not be recovering soon.’

‘I am glad to hear it. I knew I could trust you with this project. I have heard some worrying whispers of internal leakage. Disloyalty will not be tolerated. Even accidental disloyalty.’

‘We have taken care of the problem. Galen Erso, the source of the leak, has been dealt with.’

‘Excellent. But I am worried about more than just him and your predecessor. Krennic is manageable and still of use to the empire if he decides to behave. However, it has come to my attention that internal plots abound. I wish to see them quashed.’

‘I agree, sir. But I also think our priority is on the rebels. Several got away and there are unconfirmed reports that they managed to steal data from us about and it behooves us to regain complete control of the galaxy.’

‘Do not concern yourself with that. Vader is pursuing the fleeing rebel ships and he will deal with them. Now, tell me what you know about Admiral Wilken.’

Tarkin smiles. It is not a pleasant one.

 

Krennic waking in a room that is not his but in which he can see his allowed belongings piled in a corner tells him everything he needs to know. His stomach roils but mostly because the sick-bay nurse’s preferred painkiller of choice makes him nauseous but also because he knows an unceremonious demotion when he sees one. Or experiences one, as the case currently is. He wonders if his covert and not-entirely legal supply of alcohol survived the room change but doubts it. Also, he reasons, it’s probably not the best life decision to mix it with whatever the fuck they have him on at the moment. Most probably nullicaine. 

He attempts to sit up. The room spins. He lies back down and finds a point on the far wall to stare at until the dizziness passes. When it does he gropes the bedside table for his tablet and once locating it swipes it on and thumbs in his password.

His message box is disgusting. He ignores everything with the red exclamation point and goes for the ones that are clearly sent around by the unofficial social committee of the Death Star. A committee he feels particularly dubious about but let it happen because moral is low without one. He wonders if Tarkin will allow it to continue. The monthly ‘Awkward Cake’ was, indeed, incredibly awkward, but people seemed to like it and Krennic amuses himself for a time imagining Tarkin at an Awkward Cake but then reality creeps in around the edges and amusement fades to despair which is rapidly replaced with anger.

He thinks, I am going to give him a piece of my mind. Destroying Scarif with all of us still on it! And the data! The data! All that beautiful data lost because some immature asshole wanted the Death Star. Childish. Absolutely a childish decision. I would have waited until everyone was able to escape. Or if not everyone, most everyone. I would have handled it better. He clearly didn’t think it through.

Loathsome required bed-rest and nullicaine-induced spins means that he has at least ten hours to mull over the exact phrasing he is going to use when he sees Tarkin’s smug face. It also means ten hours to contemplate how best to turn things around. He wants to make a list but is wary about his tablet. The encryption he doesn't trust but at the same time, getting up to retrieve pen and paper seems impossible. The distance. The idea of sitting up. The idea of moving more than his arm. The idea of being alive at all. Settling for coded references he pulls up the notes section and begins to type all the things he has done for the empire and republic before it. The republic deeds he makes adjustments to in order to prove how they are still relevant to the empire even when they are decidedly not. He contemplates what leverage he has, if any. Leverage is the only language he and Tarkin can speak to each other in which is deeply frustrating. Everyone else likes some good rhetoric and flair but Tarkin is more mercurial than a merchant. He files that away as a future insult.

Ten hours passes. He luckily manages to sleep for most of it and giving sitting up a second tentative try he finds the dizziness has passed. His shoulder and chest still aches but it is not the searing pain he has vague memories of experiencing. As is normal in post-bacta tank experience, everything aches. His muscles are sore and he swore that his limbs did not creak like this before he went in. Errant thought: I am getting too old for this. Secondary thought: Fuck that, fifty one is not old. It is the prime!

He fidgets at the edge of his bed. Decides to prolong the shameful exiting of his bedroom to the hallways filled with people who will _know_ and will _stare_ and will _not say anything_. He checks his messages again. Skims a few urgent ones but there is nothing for him to do about them and, he realizes, he is not even sure what his demoted title is. Well, no time like the present.

Dressing takes longer than expected and putting up boots is awkward and uncomfortable but he manages and tells himself that this entire self-pity show is ridiculous considering all he suffered was a laser blast or two to the shoulder and fall onto a rescue ship. He has lived through worse. Finally ready he fixes his hair in his tablet’s reflective surface, decides to investigate the complete damage in the fresher later and strides into the hall.

Naturally the first look-non-look hits. He can feel a blush rising from chest up but manages to regain composure. It is not like he is diseased and everything that happened was unfortunate but the Empire did win the day and he can explain himself and did manage to get some useful information out of the rebels before Tarkin decided to turn everyone into dust. He smiles, yet another thing to add to his arsenal. He knows that the governor will hit back with lines about ‘gross negligence’ and ‘failure to assess the situation’ and ‘inability to manage’ and ‘stress induced’ and ‘questionable decision making process’ but this is baseless criticism he has weathered before. He goes to Tarkin’s main office but finds the door locked and, stopping a droid, he finds that Tarkin is in his secondary office. He sighs and strides back off towards it.

His tablet buzzes the off-beat rhythm of 'important message'. Krennic ignores it. It does it again. He sighs, stops and opens it up. There are three messages from Wilken all labeled important. Krennic scowls at them. The man Krennic had agreed to have on the Death Star only due to owing someone back on Corsucont a massive favour and apparently the repayment was taking Wilken on as a coordinator. Wilken. The most inept yet ambitious man in the galaxy who somehow became an Admiral, the means of which remain forever a mystery. Krennic personally assumes he purchased his commission as in the old days of the Republic because what merit has Wilken to stand on? 

Opening the first one he skims which turns into reading each word with growing dislike for an already hated man. First, how dare he announce Krennic's demotion without telling him first. Yes, he knew due to relocation but all of this is wrong. None of this is how things are supposed to go. Why is Wilken even handling it? Also, how dare he frame Krennic's demotion in such a way! The offence! The incivility of it! Does Wilken not know what Krennic had to do to cover for his failures? To clean up after his emotional fits that hurt and offended the entirety of Wilken's team? The ruffled feathers are too numerous to count and now he is saying  _such things_ about him but cannot manage to say them to his face. He angrily goes to the second message. This one calms him at first. Oh good, blame is being shared. It also gives him pause in his quest to punch Tarkin in the face. (He did have a monologue prepared but punching was equally an option.) If Tarkin was also demoted then why go to him? He finishes the message and it carries no indication as to who the next Director of the Death Star is to be. Considering the recent leaps and bounds of chain of command Krennic assumes it will be Vader or, help us all, Thrawn or someone equally high up in the Emperor's favour since apparently Tarkin is disgraced. The grin Krennic wears at that thought is not an attractive one. The third message is opened. He reads it. Reads it again. Then reads the message thread beneath it. 

Who in their right mind would do this? Would entrust his beloved Death Star to a man who cannot figure out how to write a compact email and sends three messages when one would suffice let alone run a 1.7 million person enterprise? The emperor? The thought does not compute. He wonders what Tarkin's reaction is to this news. Probably nothing but internally he would be a volcano ready to burn everything down in a large garbage fire of internal imperial politics. 

The quiet, stately ones are the always the most flammable. Well, Wilken is in charge, he thinks. This sure as fuck changes everything. 

 

 

Tarkin is looking at the ceiling above Krennic’s head because he does not want to look at the man’s face.

‘What I am getting at, Governor, is entropy.’

‘I did not follow that.’

Krennic attempts not to weave while standing. He had underestimated the effects of the nullicaine and damn he did not expect it to return as a rolling wave. He is pretty sure that it is on his medical record that nullicaine does this to him. That is perhaps, the point. He forges ahead.

‘The expression of entropy is both space, broadly speaking, and us. Constantly expanding in all directions until perfect inertia is reached then collapse. For the galaxy, and the entirety of space as we know and understand it, the how’s and why’s are known and the fall-out of the heat death has been long predicted. Or, at least we have a reasonable working theory that isn’t quite hypothesis but getting to one about the death of our - never mind. Anyway. I wrote a paper on it a few years ago. Did you read it?’

‘No,’ Tarkin lies. He adjusts his gaze back to Krennic and thinks the man is looking a bit green about the edges.

‘You should. It’s good. Very good. But, moving past the galaxy for it is merely space to this.’ Appropriate hand gesture. ‘Our relationship, as one might term it for lack of a better word, is one that expands consistently and in all directions. Sometimes with disastrous consequences for all involved. But, eventually inertia will be reached.’

‘When did you get out of the bacta tank, Lieutenant-commander?’

‘Twelve hours ago, Governor. Is that still your preferred title? It is? Oh good. I hadn’t read that far into the message about our mutual demotion and Wilken’s promotion. Who chose that man? He’s an idiot. Anyway, as I was saying, inertia. Then stasis or collapse. Unlike the outcome at the end of time we have some control over this.’

‘You are being long-winded and so if you wish to make a point I suggest you do so quickly.’

‘My voice is soothing.’

‘ _To the point_.’

‘Temporary stasis. We work together.’

‘You’re deviating drastically from your metaphor.’

‘Yes, it collapsed. Unfortunately. I hadn’t followed it all the way through in my head this far into the conversation. But my point stands. Temporary truce so we can take care of Wilken then return to status-quo.’

Tarkin does not display the current five red flags that are going off in his head. One of them is merely: Krennic Is Evidently On A Lot Of Pain Medication Which Does Not Improve His Megalomania. It also runs contrary to what Tarkin was expecting Krennic’s reaction to be, given the incredibly sudden power vacuum, which reinforces to the Grand Moff that the architect-engineer is not one to be underestimated. The obscuring of the general concern is not done without some effort. He assumes his face betrays some incredulity for Krennic sets back into his hips which is his coded body language for ‘I’m going to hammer this point home until I hammer it through the wall into the next room’. Tarkin decides to end their mutual torture early. He folds his hands and considers the man standing before him looking worse for wear and not a little rabid.

‘Why should I take you up on this?’

‘I have information for you.’

‘But what do I _get_?’

Krennic is pained, ‘you get the Death Star.’ Tarkin does not beam.

‘And what do you get?’

‘Wilkin suffers, which is a joy I have yet to experience and want to see before I die and I get a promotion.’

‘The ever erstwhile promotional grab.’

That Krennic has ulterior motives is as obvious as the sun so Tarkin decides to not play too obtuse. Besides, he has already gone contrary to Tarkin’s prediction to the emperor of the people most prone to usurpation plotting. A temporary ally would not be unwelcome as people are only put on pedestals in order to be torn down. He never intends to be a victim of a Fall. Krennic, as usual, continues to have his uses. Perhaps it is fortuitous that he escaped Scarif and, as an ally (even a demoted one) it allows Tarkin to keep some control on Krennic and keep him from running off creating new, impossible and insane projects.

‘Very well,’ Tarkin stands, offers a conciliatory handshake. ‘We have an accord.’

‘One request, Governor.’

‘Yes?’

‘Less trigger happy and better timing in the foreseeable future. We are on the same team, after all.’

‘That was not personal, you understand.’

‘Completely.’  

Tarkin must appreciate the bald faced lie and says that they can discuss strategy later. He has a free dinner in a day at 19:00h and it is agreed to. Krennic departing from a room is akin to a deflation. Tarkin sits back down and rubs his eyes and laments the continued necessity of working with a man who is both exhilarating and maddening. Krennic has the happy talent of being able to sell concepts, both existential and physical, with more ease than Tarkin has ever managed. It’s the brazenness. The bombasticity. You end up believing him while he is in front of you, which boggles the mind. Even Tarkin must admit that even though he is hyper-aware of this danger he too feels the tug. The little insistence of, ‘what if _this_ is the idea? The moment? The concept? That takes the empire forward’. Madness. Genius. Fine line. Etcetera.

Tarken moves on. Relegates Krennic to his usual compartment labeled ‘Oh Preserve Me, It’s Him’ and returns to his tablet, flicking it to the latest messages. There are a flurry, all labeled ‘important’ and all from Wilken.

  
Buzzing his secretary to schedule a meeting with the Death Star’s (temporary) new Director Tarkin admits that for all his low-class and course origins at least Krennic is _interesting_. Wilken is drying wallpaper in a uniform.

 

.  .  .

.


	3. Chapter 3

Once, Nial had taken his son to a large rock formation several hours from their home in Sativran. Everything was red and orange and it was a fire of a geological creation formed from a millennia of friction and jarring consequences of volcanic happenings on their continent on Lexrul. They spent a day hiking up to the top and once there Krennic had stood at the edge of the cliff and looked over. Wind gusted up, powerful enough to blow a boy off and away had he not been holding onto a scrap of a tree.

‘Who lived here, Nial?’ He had asked as they descended. Along the worn path were ancient paintings and carvings. Vestiges of lives before.

‘Nomadic people but they’re no longer here.’

‘Where’d they go?’

‘Don’t know. Away, I guess. Couldn’t change to fit in. It’s like that sometimes when the Republic comes in, sometimes people can’t keep up and so go away.’

Krennic now knows that there is a word for that and both the Republic and the Empire are equally guilty of it but he doesn’t really care since it doesn’t impact him and his family was always doing all right. For the most part. Anyway, progress at all costs. It is the only way forward and to not consume oneself in stagnation. He had asked Esma about the people when they returned home and she had said much the same as Nial and that had been that.

But the vertigo of standing on the edge of the rock cliff with the red of the rock and the gold of the sand and the heat of the desert and the warm air against his face and the knowing that if he didn’t hold the branch he’d be falling with feet over head. Which is, incidentally, how he currently feels leaving Tarkin’s office to be hauled into his own, former office to stand in front of Director Admiral Wilken.

He wants to sit down. He wonders if he should do a power move and take a seat without it being offered. The stern faces of those gathered tells him that this is probably not the time.

‘Good of you to take the time to see us,’ Wilken opens. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Been better.’

‘Good, good. Excellent. Now, we have a few things to cover. The first is your reassignment.’

Krennic thinks, Just say it. Just say the disgusting word. Just fucking say it. We all are thinking it.

‘As you may have heard, I am now the interim-Director of the Death Star for the foreseeable future. The emperor himself messaged me personally only a few hours ago to confirm the title change which is very considerate of him. Now, the council has conferred and we feel that your particular skills and abilities would be a better fit for a more engineering intense situation. Where your background would be put to good use.’

‘A planet-side desk job you mean.’

‘We all must serve the Empire in our own, unique ways.’

‘Did you come up with that line all by yourself or read it in a Bulletin?’

Wilken provides Krennic with a bland smile. Krennic thinks that, considering his career is in Wilken’s hands, perhaps that was not the wisest decision. But, he reasons, I have always been one for jumping head long into the fire.

Regaining the center-point of the conversation Wilken explains that, for the moment, Krennic will be working in the MEP-bay coordinating the completion of construction. Krennic’s face is one of horror. The MEP bay is where careers go to die. If a person is MEP-ed they never recover. Well, almost never. The odds are not in your favour, however.

‘Not the MEP. My talents will be wasted in the MEP!’

‘That is not what we, the council, feel. As Lieutenant-commander being coordinator of the Mechanical Engines and Plumbing sector is perfectly...adequate.’

The new list of people to punch now has Wilken above Tarkin. Part of him thinks that is perhaps a bit extreme, Wilken is petty and obnoxious but Tarkin actually tried to kill you. Most likely. Or perhaps he was not even in the calculation. Krennic suspects the latter which possibly hurts more than it being intentional. If someone is going to laser him with his own weapon at least let it be bloody personal. This is all beside the point. The point being MEP bay is the point of no return.

‘At least give me the Ship-Refurbishment bay. The SR isn’t complete and it’s highly technical and if you bothered to read my file you would know it is also my specialty.’

‘I don’t think you understand. You are not in a position to negotiate. But I will allow this show of disrespect on account of your injuries. You will report to the MEP-bay in two shifts. That will allow sufficient time for you to rest and acclimatize yourself. Your quarters are comfortable I trust?’

‘There’s no window.’

‘We gave you a sunlamp. And everyone does receive vitamin-D supplements.’

Krennic makes an executive decision to not argue. His dizziness has subsided considerably although the concept of being in a horizontal position is still an attractive one. He sighs. It is heavy. He thinks that all humans are terrible and should be thrown into the sun. Everything is wrong and life is trouble. Wilken dismisses him with a wave that Krennic thinks the man attempted to riff from Tarkin but without the twelve layers of upper-crust posh to go along with it, the effect is not the same.

Oh the ignominy of it all. To serve a new director on _his_ Death Star. _His_ project that _he_ had seen through for twenty years. To have it ripped from his hands, this close to completion, and given to such a man. Such a _bureaucrat._ The man clearly doesn’t have the ability to appreciate the Death Star. The engineering genius of it, the architectural brilliance that it encapsulates. University students will write thesis about it in the future. The symbolism of this, the innovation of that. He lives and breaths this project and now it is given to a functionary. An unimaginative functionary.

Wilken even put a plant on his desk. Only paper pushers put plants on their desks. It is a sign of softness. Krennic wants to take the plant and its terracotta pot and eject it into the sun. Generally, he feels like most things belong jettisoned into the sun. The feeling will pass, he knows. In the meantime, if he wasn’t so tired, he’d go and beat the shit out of a punching bag and smoke a pack of fags.

  
  


Avoiding the officer's mess Krennic manages to smuggle food into his room without coming into contact with too many people. The looks he has mastered, they part, separate and slide off as if water on oil skins. But the indignity still flusters. The knowing that they know that he knows that they know. The assumption that everyone is talking about him and none of it is positive. He had once said that all publicity is good publicity and he wants to go back in time and lecture his former-self on how stupid a policy that is.

He attempts to recall if his parents had ever dealt with a similar situations but nothing comes to mind. Esma had done piecemeal repairs on transport ships and Nial had done something about animal relocation and preservation. Neither parent had been particularly ambitious and when that trait came storming to the front of their child’s personality had done their best to temper it and teach him humility. The results are self-evident.

‘I can humble myself when the person truly deserves my respect,’ Krennic says to his reflection in the fresher. ‘The emperor certainly deserves respect. He is a great man. Vader, too. Admiral Thrawn I have great respect for as he’s achieved a lot for a non-human. Even Tarkin I have some respect for, I mean you can’t look at his record and not admire its ruthless efficiency.’ He pauses his conversation to finish brushing his teeth. His shoulder, when he peels back the bandages, is looking much better and the skin around it heavily bruised but that will fade with time. Working with the distraction of pain concerns him and he wonders if he could nab some pain pills from sick bay without too much notice. Considering his previous diet as Director had been smokes, headache meds, and caffeine in all forms he knows that he is on the suspect list of the sick bay. The one titled ‘These People Lift Meds For Personal Use’. He had seen the file once and thought they could use a more creative title for it.

‘It’s not like I was lifting nullicaine or any of the hard stuff,’ he complains to himself. ‘I’m not bloody Jerjerrod here.’ He pokes the bruise. The discoloured skin discolours further. He scowls at it. ‘Could be worse I guess. I could be dead. If I was dead I’d haunt Wilken’s office and knock the stupid plant off my old desk. How dare he defile it with a plant.’

Going to his desk he pulls up the MEP-bay plans and reviews them. It’s a mess. He finds who the previous coordinator was and it’s not a name he recognizes but apparently they perished on Scarif. Good riddance. The man clearly could not coordinate his own sock drawer let alone an entire bay-sector. The blueprints are reviewed. He makes a few edits and wonders what he will find when he goes in in twenty-four. Lieutenant-commander and in charge of the MEP-bay. He closes his eyes, rubs them. Wishes he wasn’t here, for a brief moment, before reminding himself that this is self pity and Orson Krennic does not do self-pity.

‘Right, right, I will recover from this. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. This will all be fine. We’ll shift Wilken somehow then Tarkin will be director but that’s manageable. I can manage that. I can manage him. It will be fine. Right, Orson? Fine.’

His tablet lights up with a banner alert. Change of dinner time by a quarter of an hour. He swipes to accept.

It has been years since he has been so hands on with a project and piles through his belongings for his old architectural books and reviews the section on supply chain building and management to refresh himself. He falls asleep with his face on the book and wakes to find an imprint of its pages on his cheek.

 

 

19:15h and Tarkin is waiting for Krennic to arrive and flicking through the files on the current Death Star council. Most are new appointments made by Wilken who is eagerly flexing his powers as interim-Director. Tarkin was, of course, included on the council but he suspects it is out of some mix of deference to his experience and some fear of the emperor who vouchsafed for his governor and grand moff. Wilken evidently assumes all secure lines in the Death Star are actually secure. This inattention to security matters already concerns Tarkin.

His dinner companion strolls in five minutes late and wearing dress uniform, though lacking a few bars from his medal rack.

‘Couldn’t find my cape,’ is Krennic’s excuse for his tardiness. His expression is one of ‘what?’. Evidently demotion has taught him nothing, Tarkin thinks while delivering a thin smile.

‘I’m pleased you have been able to make the time in your busy schedule to meet with me.’

‘We planned this a day ago. We don’t need such pretense. I feel like we’re long past them, anyway. How’s Scarif clean-up going?’

‘Well.’

A droid pours them wine.

‘Good. I suppose there isn’t much to clean up since there isn’t anything left of the facility. How did the emperor take the loss of a quarter of imperial data? Is that why you’re only a councillor on the Death Star and not the Director?’

‘Something to that effect. And the data was preserved in more places than just Scarif you will be pleased to hear.’

‘Good. That’s good. What else have I missed? Anyone else promoted or demoted and worth gossiping about? Should we form a support group? How about the SDA: Scarif Demotion Anonymous.’

Tarkin sips his wine and bids himself to have patience. The man literally never stops. How is he always on? How is he always performing?

‘We are not here to discuss paltry gossip, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘We’re off duty and having dinner, can we please at least go by surnames?’

‘I’d prefer not.’

‘Fine.’

They both sip wine. The first course is delivered and they eat in silence. Tarkin watches the shifting expressions on Krennic’s face most of them unreadable but clearly displaying some form of emotion although he does not know the name. After several minutes of this uncomfortable silence Krennic sits back and plays with his cutlery before saying, ‘all right. How are we doing this?’

‘Doing what, Lieutenant-commander?’

‘Drop the title, it’s too much of a mouthful, Governor.’

‘What? Does it offend you?’

‘No,’ Krennic snaps. Tarkin lifts an eyebrow. ‘I just think it’s ridiculous. What pretense are we carrying out right now? I can’t see it, Governor. We’re - is this room bugged? I bet it’s bugged.’

‘It’s not bugged.’

‘It was when I was Director.’

‘My suite isn’t bugged.’

‘Well I assure you it was fifty-six hours ago.’

Tarkin purses his lips and again assures Krennic that the suite is not bugged. That he has ensured it was not before their dinner, to his own meticulous satisfaction, but by all means, check for yourself. It was meant as a rhetorical offer but apparently Krennic assumed he meant it literally and began poking around the room as the first course dishes are removed. Tarkin wonders if stillness disturbs the man. He attempts to recall a time when he has seen Krennic remain still for an extended period of time and can’t pin-point one. But they had not worked in close quarters so his data is limited. Perhaps it’s nerves.

‘Does it suit you?’ Tarkin asks once Krennic seats himself again.

‘It will do. Where was I? Oh yes, titles. Pretenses. Games. It’s all fantastic when we’re having a bit of a skirmish over command but whoever let in Wilken needs to be taken out back and shot. What an idiot. He doesn’t have enough command to fill the absence we two create and doesn’t have the personality to quash tensions and rifts. You’re still on the council?’

‘I am.’

‘Insulting.’

‘It is meant as such, yes.’

‘No. That I’m not as well. I know this station better than anyone with the exception of Erso but he’s dead. So of anyone alive.’

The next course arrives. Krennic fiddles with his wine glass. Tarkin stares at the movement for a moment before attending to his food. After they both have had time to eat Tarkin replies that perhaps Wilken felt that Krennic would be too much of a disruption to the council. That he would cause undue stress for those present. Krennic scoffs. His easy assurance is staggering. Tarkin wonders at the sheer bloody-mindedness of it.

‘Still, council meetings will be an adventure in politiking. I don’t think Wilken will do well.’

Tarkin agrees, ‘it is as you say, a lack of command and will power. He is ambitious though, and that counts for much. And he has friends.’

‘Friends right now.’

‘Indeed. The best way to approach this is to destabilize him whilst maintaining some calm. Enough ripples to attract attention but not enough to capsize the boat. We have too much on the line with the recent rebel insurgency to risk it.’

‘Do you think they’ll try again so soon?’

‘I do.’ Tarkin sets his fork down. ‘You said you had information.’

‘I did?’

‘When we last spoke.’

‘I don’t recall.’

Tarkin tilts his head and reminds Krennic that they are on the same team, after all. Glory and good for the Empire. Krennic scowls and finishes his wine. He looks out the window to the nebula in the distance.

‘Galen Erso,’ he breaths out. Tarkin nods. He expected as much. ‘Hid a weakness in the Death Star. I’m not sure where but that is why the rebels were after the Death Star plans.’

‘I’m surprised it wasn’t to admire your architectural genius.’

A slip of a smirk. ‘Perhaps it was a dual motivation. Regardless, the weakness needs to be found and fixed before the rebels can make use of it. And they will, or at least try to. They, unfortunately, have talented enough people to do so.’

‘I wouldn’t overestimate their capabilities at this time. We have just dealt them a massive blow.’

‘To be sure, but I also wouldn’t underestimate them.’ Krennic pours them both a glass. ‘Speaking from personal experience. It can cause some hic-ups. Will you alert the council to this development?’

Tarkin shrugs and hopes that Krennic will allow the ambivalence to stand and won’t pry. He contemplates who he can have tailing the Lieutenant-commander to see if he decides to play both sides. The information itself came with relative grace, for a given value of grace, which does surprise Tarkin for he had expected Krennic to put up more of a fight. Perhaps he is truly worried about it. Considering recent events, and his questionable friendship with Erso, this seems plausible.

‘Could you find it?’ Tarkin asks. Their plates are removed and glasses changed for dessert wine. ‘If you had full access to all Death Star plans?’

‘Possibly. I’d need time. I don’t know what it is I’m looking for.’

Tarkin hums and nods to himself. He thinks, Oh I believe that you have a very good idea what it is you’re looking for. But he cannot blame the other man for being cagey.

‘If I were to get some to you, on the side, I would be able to tell the emperor that it is you who saved the Death Star from potential destruction by rebels. Not only saving the greatest weapon of the empire but also over one million lives from a cruel and senseless fate.’

Watching Krennic digest this is a sight. His entire body perks up and the never-quite-absent energy increases. He appears ready to run off and complete the task as they speak. Oh the glory of being a gatekeeper, Tarkin thinks. Watching people beg.

‘I can do it. But it will have to be discreet. Wilken would use this to his advantage should he find out.’

‘Certainly. Discretion is key. The moment you are not -’

‘Oh spare me the threats. I know how things work here. We never spoke, you didn’t know anything, I was acting alone, etcetera etcetera.’

  
A cool expression over port and Tarkin murmurs that he is glad that the Lieutenant-commander understands him. The Lieutenant-commander replies that it is ridiculous to keep using titles when they’re drinking wine and plotting the downfall of an admiral. It verges on preposterous. Tarkin has no real response to this beyond suspecting that Krennic just likes to use words such as ‘preposterous’ and ‘indignity’.

 

 

.  .  .

.


	4. Chapter 4

Remembering Scarif becomes a nightly ritual. Going over details and every moment he can remember leading up to the moment when he was shot and looking up and seeing the Death Star and knowing how everyone on Jedha must have felt before escaping. A habit begun in the Bacta tank continues well after.

He thinks, that girl had something when I was shot. Clipped onto her belt and she said that she was the daughter of Galen which means that it was the Death Star schematics because of course that is how the universe works. Krennic turns this around in his head. No one actually knows, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the rebels have successfully stolen this data because the archives were destroyed by a certain hot-headed governor. Therefore, there is no way to check missing files. He knows Tarkin suspects that the rebels were successful but does not know for certain and clearly (and understandably) wishes to ascertain the fact beyond a shadow of doubt. This must be so, for it is the only reason for sending Vader off on a wild rebel chase through the galaxy.

However, the question really is: Do the rebels know what it is they are looking for and if so do they have the ability to act on the information? What is the time frame? Krennic cannot tell if they have only a limited amount of time or endless amounts to get rid of both Wilken and repair the Death Star. He rubs his forehead. Stops. Looks at his reflection on the screen of his tablet and straightens his hair. First shift on the MEP-bay and he is loath to begin. Not that he fears hard work, or the endless hours of hauling an inefficient team into the present day, but oh does he hate that he is here. That he must face these people who are so low on the ladder of the Death Star and he, as their coordinator, is only one rung above. Falls, he detests them. Especially when they are caused by circumstances outside of his control.

Well, he reasons. At least Tarkin was taken down a notch or two as well. I am not alone in my shame.

The MEP-bay is located between the deep armory and storage sectors. The southern hemisphere of the Death Star is not as complete as the northern, although it is far enough along for those in power to feel confident. Arriving he finds them mid-construction of a piping system for south-navigational port plumbing. The entire design needs an overhaul, he knows, and he wonders how it even got this far without someone saying something. Who the fault lies with, on technical inefficiencies, he does not linger on too long. He had been the director, it was not his purview to view every detail of the building process. He hears Galen’s voice then, something about not seeing forests for the trees or not seeing trees for the forest. Too much of one and not enough of the other, being the message. The voice is pushed away. The reminder of his former-friend’s sense is scorched. He has gotten rid of friends before, when they conflicted too much with his plans, with his ambition, with any number of things, but he had never expected to be there when Galen finally went. Had never expected to see it.

First thing to do is meet his new crew. His old crew, actually, as they have all always been _his_ but meet them in a more personal light. They line up and his second, an officer he dimly remembers meeting before, presents the men and women.

‘The two engineers who know the MEP-bay best are Rannel Chriten and Sula Adkin, sir,’ his second, Lieutenant Linden, enthuses. Krennic nods to them and makes general inquiries to their background. He finds that Chriten is from Coruscant and her background is combat engineering, specializing in explosive control droids. Adkin he can place by her accent.

‘Lexrul?’ He asks.

‘Yes, sir. City of Melian.’

‘Background?’

‘Zero-gravitational architecture and spatial use of ship-side repair stations.’

‘Excellent. How long have you both been on the MEP-bay?’

Chriten, ‘Four years, sir.’

Adkin, ‘Seven years, sir.’

He makes appropriate comments here and moves on to the other staff. To Linden he asks for their files, especially their portfolios. What other projects have they worked on? With whom have they worked? The lieutenant says he will be on it immediately and perhaps the Lieutenant-commander would like to take a formal tour of the bay? It has been a while since anyone _official_ has paid them a visit… Krennic ignores the subtle hint at his inattention to them. He had not ignored them, had not been inattentive, he had _delegated._

‘Very well, show me the way.’

Linden is enthusiastic in all things. Including listing the latest numbers on their progress. He strides ahead of Krennic and points out all the innovations they have been able to implement which will make them one of the most efficient MEP-bays in the empire. Linden beams. Krennic replies with a thin, brief smile.

 

His desk is in the open and so there is no formal divide between him and his subordinates. With a tablet-based top and a second, area for draughting he finds it infinitely preferably to  the one he had as director if only for the draughting area. He had to make use of the meeting table in his office for all physical plans of the Death Star. Even though pure-digital draughting is the most common and popular method of design Krennic still prefers paper. He likes the feeling of accomplishment of putting physical ink and graphite to paper. Of looking up after hours of work, seeing calculations and discarded designs on the floor. Nothing is better than that sense of completion.

The job itself is deja-vu every five seconds which jars until he places it: one of his first appointments had been as a temporary second to an MEP-bay coordinator on Eriadu. Oh the irony in all of that.

Lunch is spent reading through Adkin’s file and reviewing her portfolio then comparing it to that of Linden and Chriten. He considers her work. His shoulder still aches, though it is more of a subtle one than what he had experienced the day before so improvement has been made. He also needs caf. Desperately. After some inquiries he discovers the location of the bay’s caf dispenser and the substance he drinks rips the lining from his teeth. He downs it. Makes himself a second cup. Contemplates purchasing a larger pot. Taking some pain meds he idly feels around for his pack of cigarettes and wonders when he can sneak away for a surreptitious smoke. His second watches him closer than a protocol droid on a mission. It is unsettling and lacking subtlety. Perhaps the young man is spying on him. If so, he is doing a miserable job of it.

Well, this won’t do at all. Unfurling on his desk the print-out of the bay he calls Linden over to inspect it with him. He says, ‘show me the five points of structural weakness in the loading sector.’

Linden looks at the paper then to the tablet-top. ‘Sir, we have-’

‘Show me.’

‘We have reviewed the plans to an exhaustive extent, sir. There are not any, or if they do exist they are the fault of the armoury designers.’

Krennic motions to the paper. ‘You still haven’t pointed to anything.’

Linden furrows his brow but does as instructed. He bows his head, hums over the papers. After a minute he tentatively points to an area by the main plumbing control unit, ‘if there is pressure applied here from an external force, such as a ship collision, I think it could cause problems.’

‘A rain of shit.’

‘...yes, sir.’

‘And?’

Linden continues to scour the blueprints, switching between the three Krennic displayed. Occasionally he points here and there and says that if they changed the armoury and storage units would be compromised. It is just, the MEP doesn’t really matter in the same way. Sir.

‘Doesn’t matter? Of course it matters. This is the gut of the ship. What is the most important organ in your body? The gut. Trust me. Bring me Lieutenant Adkin.’

Adkin is found and brought to Krennic who asks her to complete the same task as Linden. She points to the plumbing control unit followed by four other areas in quick succession. She apologizes, then, and says that she has been considering the plans for the bay and has long worried that some areas were overlooked. Only, no one had ever asked the team for their input on it.

‘Good,’ Krennic waves. She stops talking. ‘Good, this is well done.’ He considers her for a long moment before dismissing her with a wave. He reasons that she will do for an adequate second once Linden has proven himself to be either useless or untrustworthy. ‘Tell me, how long have you been without a head engineer?’

‘Just over a year, sir.’

‘Too long. Well, we have a schedule to get back on to. Come on, no sulking, there’s a lot of work ahead of us.’

Yes, Krennic knows, the MEP-bay is the death of all careers but if he is going to die upon this metaphorical hill he is going to make it the best damn’d death possible. And he will rub Tarkin’s face in it. And Wilken’s, too. Everyone’s face. Because like hell is he going down quietly.

 

In the Office of the Director Admiral Wilken readjusts his monitor screen. It carries an off-yellow hue that he is unused to and finds distracting. No matter what he does, however, it remains. Frustrated he calls in his secretary, Caruso, ‘fix this.’ He points to the screen.

‘Director Krennic, that is Lieutenant-commander Krennic, said that the hue helps your eyes when you’ve been using a screen for too long, sir.’

‘That is not what I asked.’

The secretary ducks his head. 'No, sir, it wasn’t sir. One minute sir, I think I remember the program to turn it off.' Wilken steps aside and allows the younger man full access to the screen in question. A few minutes later and it brightens to the familiar harsh lighting he is more used to.

‘Also, I’m not sure about the chair.’

‘It’s supposed to help with posture, sir.’

‘Well that’s fine, I suppose. Bring my old one in, just in case. It can live in the corner.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Wilken resettles in his desk and admires his plant. He leans forward and adjusts it so that the pot aligns with the corner edge. He had gone through Krennic’s desk when they unceremoniously MEP-ed him and found, amongst other detritus, five packs of smokes, all different brands, three lighters, four bottles of pain meds, two packets of digestifs and several multi-hour energy drinks. Wilken suspects that this diet explains the former-director’s occasionally twitchiness. Pulling up the security feed throughout the Death Star Wilken flips over to the governor’s office.

Tarkin is working through a pile of papers and if he squints he can make out a title on one relating to the governance of the outer rim. Wilken shakes his head. He does not doubt that the emperor knows best how to manage the Galatic Empire but he suspects allocating so much power (the governance of Eriadu, the outer rim, position of Grand Moff, and not to mention his duties as an admiral are all time consuming and involved positions) in one man is not the wisest decision. What if he dies? Or worse, what if he is inept? They have all seen what incompetency can cost the empire with Krennic.

Yet, Tarkin’s reputation is a widespread one. And a fearsome one. Also, he has known the emperor for many years. It did surprise Wilken that Tarkin was removed from position as nominal commander of the Death Star but, he supposes, even the emperor must have his limits of tolerance for braash acts, even if it is a favourite.

He flips past Tarkin through to the MEP-bay and can see Krennic bent over his desk. There is a young officer running around hectically and Wilken is not surprised to see the man already working his crew hard. Krennic always was an impossible task-master. One of the man’s many flaws.

‘When is the next council meeting?’ Wilken calls through to Caruso.

‘Next shift, 09:30h, sir.’

‘Send me the meeting agenda, I want to make sure that we discuss the latest security breaches. There should be a blue-sky with intelligence officers on how to prevent future leaks.’

‘Blue sky, sir?’

Wilken scowls, ‘an informal meeting of minds to problem solve.’ He leans back and steeples his fingers over his stomach. ‘Encouraging more cooperative approaches to problem solving is a way to ensure that everyone understands that we are a team. Please schedule the blue sky for later this week.’

Caruso eyes him dubiously. He pretends to not notice.

‘Of course, sir. Who should be included?’

‘The top intelligence officers, of course. The Death Star council. I’ll send a list of who I want to be there of the admiralty.’

His secretary jots notes and disappears out to his desk. Wilken waits a minute then returns to a quiet perusal of the security cameras. He sees a ship docking and General Veers walking off. In another there is a naval officer yelling at some grunts. Or he assumes the man is yelling, it is difficult to tell without sound.

Managing command of the Death Star has not been too arduous for Wilken and sets this down as another sign of Krennic’s incompetency. To be sure, the man was in charge during the entire construction process but his failures just mean that he didn’t manage his time and resources effectively. The priority list suggested by Tarkin is pulled up once he has become bored with the security footage and the first on the list is ascertaining the exact nature of the knowledge gained by the rebels on Scarif.

‘Lord Vader’s handling that,’ he says to himself. He recalls that Krennic had been on Scarif and wonders if he perhaps knows and so has Caruso call the man up.

‘He’ll be some while if he’s coming from MEP, sir.’

‘No matter, let me know when he arrives. In the meantime could I see a copy of the version of the Death Star schematics held on Scarif? If the rebels have that information, as Governor Tarkin evidently thinks, we had best have a look at it.’

 

 

Krennic is a wave of unpleasantness as he is shown into Wilken’s office. _My_ office, he thinks. But knows that such thoughts are futile. Are positively impotent. Wilken indicates a chair and waits for the Lieutenant-commander to make himself comfortable. Sitting on this side is disconcerting, especially as it is rather dumpy Wilken looking back at him.

I had always assumed it would be Tarkin, if anyone was to replace me, Krennic muses. Obnoxious man that he is, at least he looks more regal and can fill the chair better than Wilken. He tries to not fidget but it doesn’t work. He picks at the edge of the arm of the chair. He is thrumming with energy and wants to be anywhere but here. Or, anywhere but on this side of his old desk. 

‘Thank you for meeting with me, Lieutenant-commander,’ Wilken says as he adjusts his monitor so show the first page of the Death Star plans.

‘I was rather occupied-’

‘I've no doubt but this is of the utmost importance. The data transmitted from Scarif. That is to say, I know you were down there. By any chance do you know what it is they took?’

‘I saw a rebel with a data-disk. Sadly it was not conveniently labeled ‘Death Star Schematics’ in large friendly letters for me so I cannot say if it was actually that. However, given that they know we have this super weapon and taking into consideration their stiff-necked insistence on continuing this fight, I can only assume it was the schematics that they were after and more than likely what they transmitted.’  

‘Is there a way to confirm this?’

‘Short of going back in time and asking them nicely? No. With the destruction of Scarif we obviously cannot cross-reference missing files.’ It is with effort that Krennic withholds commentary on that decision. He shrugs, ‘finding them is the only way which, I assume, is why Governor Tarkin sent Lord Vader after them.’

‘Yes. That was my thought, thank you for confirming it. Is there any further information we should be aware of?’

Krennic feigns innocence. He knows nothing more! It isn’t as if he was having a friendly chat with the rebels while they shot at each other. Wilken scowls at him so Krennic responds with a smile then returns to his usual reserved expression.  

Upon being dismissed Krennic wonders what the brief interview was really about. Surely the admiral could have inferred everything himself. It is a mystery. Rounding the corner back towards the elevators he sees Tarkin striding towards him. Krennic thinks that perhaps he should mention the meeting with Wilken, although the hallway is hardly a safe space and he is quickly chewing through alternatives when Tarkin bumps into him, drops something into his pocket, snaps that the Lieutenant-commander had best watch where he is going. And isn’t he supposed to be in the southern hemisphere in some sort of port? Then he continues down the hall.

With great restraint Krennic waits until he is back in the MEP-bay before reaching into his tunic pocket for whatever it is that Tarkin bestowed him. It is an information stick and plugging it into his tablet he sees that it is a copy of all of Galen Erso’s communications and the Death Star plans.

He smiles to himself and marvels at what life brings a person. He whistles as he walks back over to his core engineers and tells them that they are making fine progress on their revisions.

Adkin leans over to Linden, ‘what happened to put him in a good mood?’  
  
Linden shrugs, ‘no clue. Didn’t know he was capable of one, really.’

 

.  .  .

.


	5. Chapter 5

Blueprints are a special pleasure for Krennic. The clear delineation of space and purpose and absence. Everything is lines of division from the horizon to buildings to human relations. There is  _ here _ and there is  _ there _ and there are structures that tell you how to read a landscape, a building, a person. Everything in a blueprint speaks to potential, to the long view of time. He lives for potential. He exists in the long view.  

It is something he knows someone like Tarkin will never understand. Time and architecture. There is never too much time that can be spent on perfecting a building. A ship. A space. His favourite building in the galaxy, the one that makes his bones ache when he thinks of it, won’t be for another forty years. The architect who initially designed it died over one hundred years ago. And the building itself has already been in construction for thirty years. Seventy years in total for perfection. What is the meaning of time-tables when it comes to aesthetic and physical completion. He hopes he will be alive when it is finally finished. He aims to be. He has great potential to be. In the long view, he is. 

He knows people who eschew artificial architecture for the natural. Who hate the conflict of artistic styles of cities and towns but to Krennic it is invigorating. He can date the progression of a civilization based on when and where they have certain buildings. Humanity is garish and subtle; loud and soft. He adores and hates it. Picking apart a city, deconstruction is just as alive as construction. Peel back the layers in which we have built upon ourselves. See the grime and grit and beauty beneath it. 

Opening his tablet in his room he plugs in the information stick and pulls up the schematics. They are are projected up to a hologram and he spins the small blue Death Star around wondering where it would make sense to begin. 

In the way those who are used to being planetside romanticize their home planets in that distant way as if seeing it only through a shuttle window Krennic romanticizes the Death Star. When he is away he sees it as the imposing figure on the horizon. The smooth lines, symmetry, and damn does he adore the symmetry. He traces the hologram the way he’d trace a face of a lover. 

But no, he must focus. There is a flaw and he has promised Tarkin he would find it. He taps on the image and pulls up to the engine room. He figures that he would approach it not unlike a surgeon. Go from the core outwards. 

Part way through the energy conductors and wondering if his energy drinks made it from his old desk to his room there is a knock on his door. He tabs off the blueprints and pulls up the video feed to his door. Tarkin’s face is oblong and distorted. He stares at it and wonders if he should pretend absence from his room. 

Tarkin presses the com-switch, ‘I know you’re in there, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

Still using that obnoxious title. Krennic throws dirty clothes under his bed and thanks his stars that making the bed has long been ingrained in him. He tidies a few things then goes to open the door. 

‘I was napping.’ 

‘I apologize for the interruption, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

Krennic steps aside and motions the governor in.  Tarkin sniffs as he looks around. Krennic takes a subtle breath in - nothing. It’s just the governor’s general sign of dislike of his current environs. Krennic can handle that. He might not be neat in his current throws of apathy but he is damn well  _ clean _ . 

‘I’d offer you a drink but someone scarpered off with my liquor collection and I haven’t been able to replace it.’ He moves a pile of papers off a chair at the small table in his room and procures glasses and pours them both water. ‘I think I might have a questionable bottle of wine somewhere if you’d like.’ 

‘That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant-commander. I have come on a work related matter.’ Tarkin glances around. ‘How do you find your new quarters?’ 

‘There’s no window.’ 

Tarkin nods. ‘I heard. But you did get a sunlamp.’ 

‘I hate the sunlamp.’ 

‘Bugged?’ 

‘I overturned everything last night. We’re clear.’ Krennic fishes around in the pocket-dump pot on the table and pulls out a few of the microphones he found. ‘This and a couple of other things. But I got everything.’ 

Tarkin remains unimpressed. He asks if Krennic is completely sure. Krennic replies that he is. That he’d stake his reputation on it. Tarkin says that such a stake is not of much value considering Krennic’s past personal bets. At last Tarkin relents, ‘you received the plans?’ 

‘I did. I was just looking at them.’ 

‘While napping?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Your multitasking is truly impressive. I have come to offer my assistance. Ah, before you object, Lieutenant-commander, as I know you are about to in your typical erstwhile fashion, allow me to lay out my brief reasoning. The first is that the plans for the Death Star are massive. I have been familiar enough with this project over the last many years to be aware of the sheer size and scope they must necessarily be. Second, Erso’s correspondence is also on there and that, too, must necessarily be expansive. Many hands make for light work, Lieutenant-commander. Also I firmly subscribe to the belief that more than one set of eyes is beneficial when looking for leaks.’ 

‘Are you saying I’d miss something?’ 

‘I am saying that more than one set is thorough.’ 

‘So you’re saying you think I’m not thorough.’ 

‘You are reading my words wrong, as is so often your wont. I have not said that. I have not said anything you have just implied. If you choose to believe that was my implication that is your personal decision.’ 

Krennic pushes the debris of the disabled microphones around on the table. It is not that he does not think Tarkin capable of understanding the plans or having some idea of what a leak or malfunction would look it. It is only the idea of allowing control to slip. What if Tarkin misses something? And Krennic does not review the areas that Tarkin looked at? Then they’re all lost for the rebels might know and then where would they all be? Dead, most likely. 

But Tarkin is clearly not budging and he’d hate to be given a direct order. Relenting he retrieves his tablet from his bed and places it between them. 

‘I’ve already started in the engine room. Perhaps you could begin with the outer crust and work in? We’ll ideally meet halfway.’ Krennic suggests, tabbing through to making it split-hologram-screen so they can work independently. Tarkin inclines his head a fraction which Krennic assumes to be enthusiastic agreement. 

  
  
  


‘The broad outline of the Death Star layout is your work, if I recall correctly,’ Tarkin says after a time. 

‘It is.’ 

‘Very striking.’ 

‘I believe you referred to it as the ‘large ball in the sky’.’ 

Tarkin hums. He zooms in on a sector before flicking it away as unimportant. ‘What school would it fall into? My knowledge is more on the engineering side of design I will confess.’ 

‘Planned futurism. If it had to be shoe-horned somewhere.’ 

‘As opposed to?’ 

‘Unplanned-historicism. No. The natural school would be the opposition to this. Which attempts to blend into and out of the natural world. Planned presents a contrast. The temple work on Jedha was a fusion, I would argue. It was certainly inspired by the landscape but also created enough features to strike out and from the landscape. To demonstrate that there was forcible, unnatural action taken place to make this structure. It’s more difficult to apply these very loose schools to space, though. We’re not trying to make ships fit into and out of nebulas. Pure structuralism and practicality. I know a man who would derisively call such works featurism. In general terms featurism is elusive and not attempting to say anything. You cannot read featurism as clearly as you can read the senate building or an old Jedi temple.’ 

‘What caused you to specialize in architecture?’ 

Krennic cannot think of an appropriate answer. His response is, initially, ‘well, a rock, actually. And the people who made their home in it and on it’. But that reeks of provincialism. He does not wish to continue having his well-worn reputation of being  _ provincial. _ He says something, he can feel his lips moving. Oh there is something about job postings and the intellectual quality of the work and something untrue about a museum as a child. He babbles before managing to shut himself up and focus on the drive shaft of the Death Star. 

The benefit of a sphere, other than mimicking planets and stars and so playing the role of ultimate creator, is that it is structurally a sound object. Difficult to damage and able to sustain fantastical amounts of force. The buttressing on the Death Star makes his heart sing. The equations that went into the buttressing could whisper him to sleep. 

The onus of conversation has fallen on him but he cannot think of anything to say or ask. He does not want to know paltry information about Tarkin. He does not care. He does not wish to know about his life and his ambitions and the spark that set it all off. Considering that Tarkin is, well, a Tarkin he has a suspicion that the spark to set him off wasn’t so much a moment of inspiration as a jab in the direction of Career and Prospects. 

But that would be childish. And spiteful. He loves living for spite almost as much as he loves his work on the Death Star. He doesn’t live entirely for it, spite that is, but he allows that it is a significant motivator. But it is also provincial. Ah, full circle to that dreaded label. 

‘And you?’ Krennic asks after far too long a pause. ‘Engineering, yes? Pretty pure science for a while I think.’ 

‘Before sullying it with application, yes.’ Tarkin gives a dry smile. ‘A family tradition.’ 

Of course it is, Krennic thinks. Every promotion just handed to you on a silver platter is also a family tradition, too. 

‘Your family disagree with taking the applied science route? It makes little sense not to if the military is your career.’ 

‘I made effectively the same point. It’s all very political and completely inconsequential, now.’ A fraction of a second and Krennic is certain that Tarkin is about to add more. To give him some information that is actually interesting but alas, he returns to habitual quietude. 

  
  


Going to his bedside table for a second six-hour energy drink and Krennic is aware of a withering stare. They are hardly a quarter into the Death Star and have obviously not begun on Erso’s correspondence. Krennic is loath to crack open that file. While he has natural fondness for a childhood friend, and Erso most certainly had his uses, he is more worried about how their correspondence will reflect on him. One does try and keep Tarkin’s withering stares down to a complete minimum. 

‘I’ll stop after this one,’ Krennic says. Tarkin does not acknowledge the statement. ‘It’s my only vice.’ 

‘Oh I hardly doubt that, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

‘Only human, Governor. I’m allowed to have a few.’ 

‘Quite.’ 

An unsatisfactory ending. Krennic pokes around in the drive shaft more. It is bigger than he remembers and only just-completed. He knows adjustments have been made to it since this print was drawn-up but he assumes that they are working with this version for a reason. He decides to inquire. 

Tarkin, ‘two reasons. The first, and most pressing, is that this would be the version that the rebels would be working with provided it is the Death Star plans they acquired. The second, is that this is only version that does not require my hacking past Wilken’s personal security network. He has made it very sticky. Sliding through leaves marks so he would know.’ 

‘How obnoxious.’ 

‘Indeed.’ 

‘I really hate that man.’ 

‘So you have said before.’ 

Krennic leans back with eyes wide, ‘you are not telling me you  _ like  _ him?’ 

Tarkin’s expression becomes mildly sardonic. 

Krennic, ‘oh good. I was worried for a second. Afraid a rebel had gone in and done a mind-swap on you.’

‘I have no idea what farcical literature it is that you read but I highly suggest ceasing and desisting if it leads you to such outlandish assumptions.’ 

Krennic scowls and mutters under his breath that he reads perfectly good works of literature. That it is reasonable to attempt to assess Tarkin’s views on Wilken.

‘You know my views on the man, Lieutenant-commander. I hardly need repeat them.’ 

The tone, to Krennic, is tart if not bridging on frigid. Perhaps they have maxed-out their ability to be in a room together without out-right fighting. Beginning the process to power down his tablet he claims that he does actually need some sleep before his shift and that they can continue this at a later date. 

‘I’ll perhaps tackle some of the correspondence,’ he says. 

‘An outside perspective might be more useful,’ Tarkin replies. 

Krennic shakes his head, ‘no, no. I think being familiar with the project will allow me to-’

‘If you did not catch slips the first time then I doubt you will catch them a second time.’ 

Fuming Krennic stand and says that it has been a pleasure but perhaps Tarkin should leave? And, also, has the governor not considered the possibility that there is nothing in the correspondence to begin with? Erso was smart. He’d hardly send a memo to me on it. 

Tarkin’s smile is too glib, too fleeting for his likes. But he attempts graciousness as he shows the governor out and suggests they resume the next time they both have a free shift. 

Lying in bed the room is utter darkness. No window, no starlight, no ethereal illumination from distant planets and suns for him to watch. The silence grates, as well. He gropes for his tablet and finds a five hour loop of rain and turns it on. The background noise aids his sleep. Drifting off he returns to his nightly habit of remembering Scarif. Of being shot. He replays everything scene by scene. Line by line as much as he can remember but he knows there are fragments. Illusory bits that cling to the shadows of his memory and because of that he assumes them to be important. Did the rebel girl tell him what Erso had done? Where Erso had placed the weakness? Try as he might he cannot recall. Cannot sculpt her words or meaning. 

Pushing away the memories he ponders Wilken’s odd desire for confirmation and wonders if he perhaps should have said something to Tarkin. But damn the man, he is on the Death Star council, still. If he can’t manage Wilken’s apparent inability to make inferences that is his own problem. Exploiting the two of them, and the knowledge of the Death Star’s weakness, is the real conundrum. He is too tired to think of a solution and worries that he is becoming immune to caffeine.

 

.  .  .

.


	6. Chapter 6

Updates! He needs an update on the rebel movements but nothing is forthcoming. Oh Tarkin is aware that Wilken is being fed some nerf-feed from the emperor but he is expecting, wanting, nay _needing_  real information. The emperor, to Tarkin’s mind, is too concerned with internal rifts. To be sure, they exist. To be sure, they are a concern and power-grabs and internal coups are worrisome and a sign of discontent. Of people thinking outside their station within the empire but this is distinctly _not_ the time. He has attempted to explain this to the emperor five times over the past week. Roughly once every two shifts.

There had been a time, Tarkin remembers, when Palpatine had listened to him. When he took him in confidence and there was no inner working of political machinations that Tarkin was not aware of, was not part of.

To him this does not feel like he is being put to pasture. He remains Grand Moff and Admiral and Governor and his power, in true reality, has not diminished. The play-acting aboard the Death Star is to root out weak links such as Wilken and his co-horts. Rather, it feels like the Palpatine Tarkin knew fifteen, twenty years ago is drifting away. Is separating from himself and so the person ruling is a shell of the former man.

‘Whiluff,’ the emperor had greeted him only hours ago. ‘How fares my Death Star?’

Tarkin wondered at how Krennic would react to that. Anyone else, even the emperor, laying claim to the Death Star. The Leiutenant-commander is deeply territorial. To a distressing degree that is most certainly at odds with military unity.

‘It is well. Currently the focus is on locating the weakness and repairing it before the rebels are able to act on the information we assume them to have. Has Lord Vader spoken to you of his progress in that regard?’

‘He has,’ the emperor was dismissive in tone. ‘But never mind that, Whiluff. Tell me of your work in rooting out potential threats from within.’

Tarkin had winced, at least in his mind. ‘Wilken has not acted untoward. I am monitoring the situation and hope to put the council in such a position where some will take action and we can see more fully who is loyal and who is not.’

‘Excellent. I am glad to hear that you have everything in hand. I expected no less.’

‘I do think our focus should be on the rebels, though, and capturing the pod that escaped during the battle above Scarif.’

‘It is in hand.’

Tarkin had wished to press the point but felt that it was not the time and so let it lie. The emperor had then spoken of his fear for the empire. Tarkin had perked up briefly, hoping that at least something was catching the man’s attention beyond his paranoia of internal factions but it was more of the same and the meeting ended with the governor feeling dissatisfied with the current state of affairs.

It is not that he does not have faith in the empire, certainly not. It is, he believes, the only thing holding the galaxy together. If the Republic were to return with it would come regionalism, factionalism and that would lead to strife. To years of war and perpetual balancing of powers and crises of one planet or planetary collection attempting to usurp a position of dominance against another. The empire might be harsh in its rule but that is the price of security and safety. There had been a senator, during the Civil War, who had quipped to Tarkin that if people are willing to give up freedom in order to attain security they deserve neither freedom nor security.

Tarkin takes a dim view to this assertion. People deserve nothing. That is not the nature of life. The concept of inalienable and inviolable rights are created by a government seeking to control. They are just as binding and rigorous an idea, a mode of governance, as the imperial code and law. One, though, brings fractious, disjointed rule that does not allow people to flourish. The other brings unity and therefore peace. Tarkin knows which side he rests his loyalty and belief upon and if it means taking out a few civilizations, a few cleansings, then so be it. For security, for peace, for prosperity what are a few million lives in a galaxy of innumerable peoples?

 

Contacting Lord Vader is the trouble. The man must have made some progress. It has been a week since Scarif and so either he is close to capturing the rebels or he has lost them completely. Tarkin wishes to know in order to adjust how he is going to approach Wilken in the next council meeting.

He sends a meeting request. Second one in four shifts. There is not _that_ much background radiation in the galaxy to disrupt their signals. He assumes Vader is playing chicken due to a lack of success.

Pulling up work relating to the Outer Rim he wonders how best to approach the massive re-manning program now that there have been two Star Destroyers destroyed, an entire base, not to mention miscellanea personal here and there. _Krennic_. The man really knows how to make massive headaches for everyone around him. He constructs them as finely and with as much care as his buildings.

Major question: should he institute a massive draft or a tax raise or an amalgamation of both? And where?  He ponders this then decides that it warrants a diagnostics run. Might as well put it on a graph to contemplate for a few days. As he plugs in the required data a response banner floats across his screen indicating that Vader has requested a meeting.

‘Thank fuck,’ Tarkin mutters. He scowls as he accepts. The language, where did it come from? Oh yes, Lieutenant-commander Krennic who curses worse than Piett after too much rum. He checks his calendar and compares it to Krennic’s and finding the next shared free block he books it for further schematics analysis. He had been raised with the belief that environment trumps the nature of a person’s birth which is to say that just because a man is born in a stable does not make him a horse. Krennic was born in a stable. Krennic had the privilege of being selected to attend one of the most prestigious educational programs in the galaxy, mix with the best company that the military and society has to offer, and still managed to turn out a horse.

It boggles the mind.

He can hear his father’s sneer. The imagining of it permeates the room. He smiles at the recollection, it is thin and not pleasant. During this brief visit to old memories Lord Vader’s vessel contacts him and he opens up the contact line.

 

 

The inspiration came to him in early hours. How to make the MEP-bay fantastic. It all has to do with the interplay of light that comes in from the windows and how it will interact with the internal shape. He thinks about shadow play. About how the bay is to be lit. How it will look when passing a star. When passing a nebula. When passing nothing but velvet darkness of space.

The MEP-bay is mostly empty when he walks in, makes himself a caf, and spreads out the latest revised plans. The only one present of his lieutenants is Adkin who is wary of his enthusiasm.

‘But sir, we just sent new plans to the workers not twenty-four hours ago!’

‘Fine. They won’t have started. Trust me, these are better.’

He can see her dubious expression and is exhausted by the doubt everyone evidently carries towards his ideas. The problem, he thinks, is that no one has a wide enough sense of possibility. Of what can be achieved. Even Tarkin is limited. The darkest recess of his mind also includes the emperor although he would never admit it aloud. They all lack inspiration. Ambition to achieve true greatness.

He asks, ‘you have read the poem?’

‘What poem, sir?’

‘Rough translation from a dialect on our planet, Mirovian, but it goes something like: something something _and amidst ancient wonder / we stand and see what came / before our dust was e’er dreamt of / and cannot but think / these men had once been great._ I am translating it terribly. You take the point, though?’

‘This is the MEP, sir. Not a monument.’

‘Does that matter? Does it matter that it is a _mere_ MEP-bay? Of course not. I can see ambition in you, Lieutenant. Do not let _mereness_ quash it.’

He nods at her rising interest as she looks over the new plans. There is a bit of himself, when he had been twenty-something and just trying to get out and do _something_ with his skills, that exists inside Adkin. She has the same sharpness, the same keenness to be useful. To always be working and improving upon things.

‘No, sir. I won’t sir.’ She pauses over a section. He can see her thinking and waits for her to make a suggestion. She doesn’t.

‘Well?’

‘Sir?’

‘You have something you evidently wish to express.’

‘I don’t want to be uncouth, sir.’

‘We’re from a bucket of a planet, Lieutenant Adkin. We are allowed to be uncouth. Just not provincial. Don’t be provincial. That is allowing _mereness_ to win.’

A flicker of a smile. ‘Well, sir, I think the buttressing here could actually be reinforced. The deep weapons storage is above us but they also use part of it for intensive repairs of class I imperial ships. However, I think there’s a way to reinforce it without ruining the design. Sir, is there a reason why we’re making this bay aesthetically pleasing?’

‘Yes.’

She looks at him expectantly. He thinks: This is what having a protege is like. This is why people take on students.

He smiles over his caf, his accent is full Lexrul for the sake of effect, ‘because it will piss governor bleeding Tarkin off.’

 

The council meeting, halfway through, is not going the way Wilken had planned. Security breaches make people antsy to begin with, let alone ones that could result in their relative termination in regards to their existence.

Tarkin is the only one who seems calm but the man is a reptile and has that otherworldly calm Wilken has witnessed in certain aliens and animals. The non-mammalian blinks. The cold-blooded approach to expression. A lack of feeling.

The additions from the security bureau and the Admiralty are also quite calm. No, no it is only the regular council members who are worried and this annoys Wilken. He had briefed them! Kept them abreast of developments!

‘The issue,’ one of the regular council members, Rear-Admiral Iro, stressed, ‘is whether or not the Erso Incident is one-time or indicative of greater structural problems. We need to do a shake-down.’

Wilken shakes his head. ‘No, no that is too disruptive. The Death Star is almost complete, almost fully operational and it is at a very delicate point.’

‘I think this would be an ideal time to shake the tree, see what falls out. If we need to change staff, readjust security measures it should be before an operating crew is completely entrenched. Who managed the computer developments? The operating system?’

Wilken flips through a folder, trying to find the name.

‘A Captain Miena before being promoted up and out,’ Tarkin says watching Wilken with those reptile eyes. ‘Her background is ground transport coupled, rather pecularly, with deep-space evacuation. Regardless, it was felt she had a better fit elsewhere.'

Iro, ‘how did she end up there to begin with? It seems like a divergence.’

‘She developed the operational systems used in archiving data for Coruscant city administration.’

‘Big data work!’

‘Beyond big data, captain. People only use ‘big data’ when they have no meaningful understanding of what ‘big data’ means. But why are you inquiring?’

Iro shrugs, ‘if there is going to be a shuffle, _and_ we think the rebels have internal information, we need to ensure that all systems are secure. That there are no, oh what is the term, backdoors or trapdoors or what have you.’

Tarkin nods thoughtfully. To Wilken it seems that something has occurred to the governor but if it is of any import or pressing concern he does not share. The distraction, the thought flying away from him, lasts only a half-second before he is again present. Again that subtle weight in a room.

‘Before we begin planning a shuffle,’ Tarkin says. ‘I have an update from Lord Vader.’

Wilken scowls, ‘that should have gone through me!’

‘He felt pressed for time and is not current on the chain of command in place upon the Death Star. He believes that he will be making contact with the escaped rebel ship soon. Within a day or so and so we must be prepared to act. If they have had the schematics since Scarif who knows what they transmitted and to whom.’

‘Tighten security,’ Wilken says.

‘Oh yes.’

Wilken tabs something into the screen on the table. Up pops the death star schematics, ‘this is the latest schematics. There were changes and updates from the old version and I have included them in this copy. The rebels presumably have the previous version.’ He pulls up the Scarif version. ‘Despite the setback I am feeling confident, gentlemen, that we will withstand whatever attack they organize. The Death Star is well constructed and impenetrable. My only concern is attempted hacking and so we will have a trusted systems analyst look over what this Captain Miena made but I am sure all is in order.’ Spreading his hands on the table Wilken smiled at the men, ‘I think, we can safely assume, we are in an unsinkable ship. But, I would like to discuss with you all protocol to be implemented to prevent Erso Incidents from ever happening again.’

Tarkin, ‘could we please refrain from immodestly naming the leak after the man? He has taken up enough time and space within the empire already. Posthumous remembrances are hardly necessary.’

‘Fine, fine. What shall we call it? The Death Star Incident? The Scarif Leak?’

‘It does not require a, I detest to say this, a “cutesy” name. It was a breach in security. You wish to have a,’ he consults the meeting notes on his tablet. ‘ _Blue sky_ about it? Very well. Perhaps not a terrible proposition. But there is no need to go about attaching names to scandals and breaches. It is unprofessional and insults our intelligence.’

Wilken attempts to not deflate. He focuses on the meeting agenda and charges forward. He had known, and Caruso had reminded him during his planning of this meeting, that Tarkin would be the most resistant to change. Especially any form of modern management techniques. This is what frustrates Wilken the most: officers like Tarkin. He does not deny that Tarkin has a well earned reputation and has contributed much to the empire over the many years. But he is no longer at the forefront of thought, the movers and shakers and do-ers of the empire. There is a younger generation itching to make something of themselves, to change and grow the empire in new and dynamic ways and the leftovers of the Civil War and early empire are in the way.

Retirement, he thinks as Iro takes the floor with suggestions. Haven’t men like Tarkin heard of it? But no, he knows, Tarkin will never retire. He’ll either die in battle or be found at his desk, uniform pristine, and dead from overexertion. Whichever mode it happens in, it cannot occur soon enough.

 

Tarkin finds Krennic between shifts. They are passing in hallways and he does not know why but he thinks this is the only thing to do when frustration and desire to murder a semi-superior is at its height.

‘He’s a fool,’ Tarkin hisses. ‘And we’re going through more schematics on your C-shift.’

‘I can only assume you’re talking about Wilken and yes he is. Did I tell you? He had me in a for a chat. Wanted to know which plans it was the rebels took. How hard is it to reason that line of logic out? Apparently very difficult if your Admiral fucking Wilson.’

‘Your language has yet to improve.’

‘Bugger off. I’m tired.’

Tarkin tuts, ‘ that is no excuse for being uncouth.’

Krennic sneers and moves to walk away.

‘C-shift, Lieutenant-commander.’

Krennic whirls around, cape flourishing, ‘you know, one of these days governor, someone is going to shove you out of an airlock and blame it on a malfunction and old age.’

‘Low blow, Lieutenant-commander. You can do better than that. C-shift.’

‘I heard you the first time.’ Krennic turns back around and waves as he walks down the hall away from Tarkin.

Is there a sense of enjoyment in these interactions? Tarkin is uncertain and takes that thought and puts it aside to be analysed further. This is something that he is not entirely adverse to now that Krennic is no longer in his way regarding the Death Star. The man is obnoxious to be sure, but that doesn’t mean every interaction must necessarily be a trial. It is possible for a person to be disliked mostly universally but still be found, by some, to be tolerable (he supposes) company.

In a moment of pettiness he messages Krennic on a secure line, ‘did you put C-shift in your calendar?’ He smirks as a flurry of ten frustrated messages follows. He continues to get lines of ‘you know I’m not as obtuse as you think I am’ for the next four hours.

  
Worth it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am just fucking with the Star War’s timeline at this point. I have taken everything, put it in a blender, and pressed ‘blend’ and this is the monstrosity that resulted.

 

Before they meet Tarkin instructs Krennic to come to his rooms and bring the information. They will do further analysis in a marginally more comfortable environment he explains. Krennic’s room barely contains the man himself, let alone two. When Krennic arrives on time Tarkin will admit that he is mildly shocked and perhaps there is something to be salvaged. 

Looking around Krennic sniffs. Puts about and lifts up books and trinkets and then admires the view from the window. At this Tarkin internally adjusts his assessment: no, there is nothing here to be salvaged. The man has no manners.  

‘It's not my fault my rooms are not comfortable for long term habitation.’ Krennic says, finally seating himself at a large table by the window. The Death Star currently resides in one of the more obscure Empire held star clusters until further information about rebel movements has been discovered. Wilken had announced this in morning council with more gravitas than strictly necessary. Tarkin had had to resist rolling his eyes. All of this to say, at the moment, they are at an angle where flares from the local sun provide enough light without being overbearing in this side of quadrant and the visual is something close to unqiue. 

‘I believe it is entirely your fault,’ Tarkin replies as he primly adjusts the screen surface of the table to project at a convenient angle and height. ‘Actions have consequences. Speaking of actions, I heard you were planning to revamp the MEP-bay and when I did I knew that couldn't be right. That  _ you _ wouldn't be flaunting orders so soon. That you had truly learned from past mistakes.’

Krennic ignores him and begins dissecting the Death Star. Tarkin’s frown deepens. Krennic looks up at him and shrugs.

‘I'm making it better. You get control of it all when we are done with Wilken so don't complain.’

‘Your orders were to finish the bay not to change and override former plans.’

‘I'm doing what I think is best. I do have some control and autonomy here, governor.’ 

Tarkin minimizes the projection so he can see Krennic’s face clearly. ‘No,’ he says slowly. ‘You do not. You have proven incapable of managing power and responsibility in a meaningful way.’ As he speaks he watches Krennic’s shoulders stiffen. His hands twitch along the edge of the table and Tarkin thinks that the Lieutenant-commander is going to snap something back but instead he looks out the window for a minute. There is silence. Tarkin knows that he can out-wait a rock if necessary and Krennic is much less disciplined than him. 

‘An MEP-bay is hardly -’

‘It is nothing. That is the point. Consider this a lesson. And really, Lieutenant-commander, I am throwing you a bone here with this,’ a motion to the plans. ‘Because I believe that you remain useful to the empire. Do not sabotage yourself.’

Krennic whips back and glares at him. It is fierce and Tarkin can see that when Krennic is angry his eyes are very blue. Blue like the waters of Scarif. A blue that is blue enough to wound. He allows a glimmer of a smirk. 

‘I should not be punished for making things better,’ Krennic hisses. 

‘That is not how this works as you are well aware. I know you are not a stupid man and so I beg you to cease acting like one.’ 

Krennic is still ready to snarl when Tarkin enlarges the plans and there are blue Death Star schematics between them. He can still see, if not feel, Krennic’s fury through it, indeed, it is almost palpable. 

‘Focus, Lieutenant-commander. I need you to focus for all our sakes.’ 

Krennic shifts at this, his body language suddenly saying ‘thank you realizing that I am important’ which grates but Tarkin ignores it for the sake of maintaining the man’s focus on the plans. This repetitive work Tarkin finds to be relaxing and allows him time to mull over other issues on his mind. At the moment, the lack of knowledge of the location of the rebel base. If Vader manages to capture the escaped ship then perhaps he can ascertain the whereabouts of the base but it is no sure thing. 

Nothing is ever a sure thing. That life thrives on the edge of chaos is deeply troubling to Tarkin. He knows that life, truly thriving life, requires innovation. Requires motion and change and conflict. Yet it cannot be too conflict driven, too chaotic or else there will be a dissolution of life, of an entire system. But a rigid system leads to stagnation and extinction. The Republic was too much of the former. There was a thriving life but like when an invasive species comes into a new habitat, with no natural predator, it gorges itself until nothing remains to support and in living too much and too well it kills its future. 

The empire he will admit to worrying about. In his mind it is an organism, expanding and contracting as needed, as is warranted. But like any system it requires pruning to maintain efficiency and life. The empire, at the moment, is thriving. There is enough change to fuel growth and innovation but not enough to spiral down into anarchy. At the moment. And this moment, he knows all too well, is as fine as a knife’s edge. 

If the Rebels gain any more upper hands they will tip into chaotic dissolution. If the empire wins the day but becomes complacent and content they will tip into extinction from too little change. Too much, too little of change can kill a system. 

Krennic is too much of the chaos when unrestrained. He’d drive the entire empire into the ground for the sake of innovation. For the sake of grandeur. The emperor, Tarkin thinks without thinking it, is the exact opposite. This leaves Tarkin in the middle to balance both sides according to their uses. 

Balancing the emperor is easy enough, mostly because for all of Tarkin’s concerns he does believe that Palpatine is still present and with it in a meaningful way. Krennic, on the other hand, is the more difficult one to gauge. Self-interest is certainly a motivating factor but there are underlying interests and motives that he has yet to dissect. 

‘You’re pensive,’ Krennic remarks at an interim. 

‘No more so than usual.’ 

‘I disagree. Wilken has you ruffled.’ 

‘The leaps and bounds your mind makes are truly staggering.’ 

‘Has he been heaving in council meetings?’ 

Tarkin shrugs, ‘he is a fool.’ 

‘We’ve been over that and we are agreed. First time for everything. Are we going to fix this station behind his back and pull a fast one when the rebels come visiting? Let him sweat for a bit and try and explain himself to the emperor.’ 

Tarkin mulls this over. He is inclined to neither agree nor disagree to any of Krennic’s suggestions. He wonders if it is possible to get past Wilken’s security without leaving a trace. That being the sticking point. The man must have something on him. Everyone does, after all. 

‘Do we think it possible for there to have been more than one leak?’ Tarkin asks after a suitable pause in Krennic’s listing of suggestions ranging from smear campaigns to petty acts of daily inconvenience to visit upon Admiral Wilken. 

Krennic stills. Tarkin wonder what he is warring over in his mind for clearly there is a dual happening before the Lieutenant-commander replies, ‘possibly. Are you implying Wilken? Because I don’t think it is him.’ 

‘I’m implying nothing. I am asking you what you think.’ 

‘If there is one, it’s new. And if it is Wilken the best way to find out is to see what information the rebels have to trace it backwards.’ 

Tarkin thinks, Wilken has been fed Chicken-feed and everything so far has been so revolved around Erso and the reneged pilot that any other leaks are likely to have been covered up. And Wilken isn’t the sort. He’s no idealist hiding in plain sight. No, this is not the avenue to pursue. 

He waves it away, ‘never mind the suggestion. It was an errant thought.’ 

Krennic resumes his thinking position with chin resting on his left-hand as he opens up another area of the Death Star to examine. He murmurs that he didn’t know Tarkin had errant thoughts. It makes him decidedly human. 

  
  
  


The way news is disseminated through the Death Star is by word of mouth around the refill stations for water and caf. Which is how Krennic comes to hear that Lord Vader has, at last, arrived with rebel captives. 

‘I want to see them,’ Krennic is immediate in his response. He thinks that he has a right to see them. They tried to shoot him after all! 

Adkin shrugs, ‘I don’t know, sir. I heard it from Linden who heard it from Laureen in Sick Bay who heard it from Childers who heard it from Caruso, the director’s secretary, who overheard the Grand Moff and Lord Vader discussing the matter. So, take that for what it’s worth.’ 

Krennic fidgets. This is unfair, he fumes. Tarkin would have known that Vader was bringing them in and he should have told him. They are supposed to be on the same side, after all. But clearly that’s buggered for a lark. Angrily he pours himself a second cup of caf. 

‘That’s your third in the last hour and a half, sir.’ 

Correction: he angrily pours himself a third cup of caf then tops it up. 

‘How many captives did Vader take?’ 

‘Don’t know, sir I’m assuming a few since apparently people were up in a tizzy about it.’ 

Krennic raises an eyebrow, ‘up in a tizzy?’ 

‘People were in a flurry? Were terribly concerned?’ 

‘Terribly concerned, Lieutenant. That will do. Not quite the right word. But it will do. All right, I’m off to find a Grand Moff. Continue with the adjustments as we discussed.’ 

‘Shouldn’t you tell Lieutenant Linden that, sir?’ 

Krennic blinks. Why should he do that? Linden is incompetent. Oh right, Linden is his second. That’s why. ‘Convey the essence to him for me.’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

He swirls around and marches off as firmly as he can manage without spilling caf on himself. The open mugs are a terrible idea and he adds it to the ever growing list of small changes that need to be made. 

 

The problem with massive space stations like the Death Star is that one can never really say if they are fully operational since everything is in constant need of editing, of perfecting, of fixing. They have all the concerns of a space station, a refitting station, and a ship containment facility but double those concerns then add onto them the daily needs of a large city of 1.7 million people along with 400,000 droids. The plumbing alone, Krennic now knows in excruciating detail, is a nightmare. And the garbage chute! The flipping garbage chute! Do not get him started on the garbage chute. 

He almost called Nial about the garbage chute. And it’s bad if he feels the need to call Nial about it. Waiting for the elevator he plays over the hypothetical conversation with his father: 

‘Hello Nial, there’s a large creature in the garbage chute. What should I do with it?’ 

‘Has it been fed recently?’ 

‘Presumably. It’s in the garbage chute.’ 

‘Is it harming people?’ 

‘It’s harming the structural integrity of my ship. I want it out.’ 

‘Shove someone down and video record it for me so I have some idea of what we’re working with here.’  

‘I can’t do that. It’s against about two hundred regulations.’ 

Nial would then complain about regulations and about the law and a lot of other things that shouldn’t be recorded on outgoing calls from the Death Star. Especially at a time like this. 

 

Arriving on the main deck he strides towards Tarkin’s office, assuming that at the very least the governor’s assistant will know where he is. The assistant does not and does not appreciate being interrupted. Krennic makes a face then heads for the council room. As he rounds a corner he finds himself face to face with Lord Vader, Tarkin and Wilken. 

‘You caught the rebels.’ He says. 

‘Lord Vader caught  _ some  _ of the rebels,’ Tarkin replies smoothly. ‘But this is none of your concern, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

‘What do you mean it’s none of my concern? Of course it’s my concern.’ 

‘You are getting away from yourself.’

Krennic hates the well-oiled smoothness of Tarkin in ‘politician mode’ which is, he knows, the mode the man operates in about 95% of the time. It gets under his skin and into the back of his mind and when he does things like revamp the MEP-bay it is beginning to be Tarkin’s voice of ‘really, Krennic?’ rather than Galen’s. Neither being in his head would be the most preferable. It’s all the shifts pouring over the schematics together. It’s blurring things. Krennic dislikes blurred lines. They are imprecise and can cause catastrophic results. 

Tarkin pushes past him followed by Vader and Wilken. Wilken catches Krennic’s eye and Krennic thinks he sees something there. Some resentment. Some anger. At him or at Tarkin or at the entire situation is uncertain. Krennic just smiles but he makes sure that it isn’t a very pleasant one. 

  
  


During his off-shift, which happens to be the C-shift again and he suspects that is on purpose, Krennic decants to the bar for something strong and a corner to sit in. Lieutenant Adkin follows him up and he doesn’t have the heart to shoo her away. Her enthusiasm is pleasant and it’s always nice to speak to a fellow Lexrulian. 

Sitting down with drinks Adkin reaches up to finally take her hat off and black curls bounce up. 

‘It’s hell keeping them down,’ she says. ‘I’ve contemplated just cutting it all off. My aunt was in the navy back during the Republic and I remember she did that. Said it made everything easier.’ 

Krennic would know so makes an encouraging noise. 

‘Did you have any family in the military, sir?’ 

‘Oh no. None. I’m not sure my parents will ever forgive me. Though they were pleased as punch to hand me off to the Futures Programme. Your aunt still serve?’ 

‘Oh no, sir, she died.’

‘My apologies.’ 

‘Thank you, sir. But I mean, haven’t we all lost someone in the wars? Family or friend. We all know someone who has died. They kind of bleed into each other don’t they, sir?’ 

‘I keep a spreadsheet.’ 

She snorts into her drink then covers her mouth. He maintains composure and doesn’t disabuse her of the notion nor clarify whether he was speaking of the wars or the numbered dead he knew. 

Her face changes and a shadow falls over the table. Krennic smiles joylessly at the reflection in the window of Tarkin standing over him. Without looking at the governor Krennic motions to the empty seat, ‘come join us, governor. Lieutenant Adkin and I were just discussing families and war. Not a light topic but we can change it.’ 

Tarkin to Adkin, ‘if you will excuse us a moment, Lieutenant.’ She is standing up straighter than an arrow in an instant and practically flees the scene. ‘What a strange girl.’ 

‘Best architect I’ve met, barring myself of course.’ 

‘Wherever did you find her?’ 

‘MEP-bay. You know we are wasting a lot of talent down there.’ 

‘Yours not included.’ 

‘Mine most certainly included. Lieutenant Linden can stay, though. He is uninspiring.’ Krennic stands. He can see by Tarkin’s expression that this is not the time. Turning the governor leads them out of the bar and down the hall. 

‘There was no need to be so condescending earlier,’ Krennic says as they walk. He has a distinct feeling that this is the topic du jour and wishes to just get the lecture over with. He has better things to do than listen to Tarkin lecture him about protocol. They stop in front of a board room and Tarkin cards it open. ‘Considering that one of the rebels shot me, and more to the point, I’m the only one who saw them face-to-face, it is perfectly reasonable to-’

It is sudden - Tarkin shoving him up against the wall and the height difference becomes very noticeable at this point and Tarkin is surprisingly strong for such a willowy frame. Krennic files this away from useful information. The drawer it is put in is labeled ‘people to have on your side when you’re in a fist fight’. They are very close. Krennic focuses on the ceiling because Tarkin’s eyes are ones he wants to look into just at the moment. 

Should I push back, he wonders. Or should I let him snarl like a dog and get it over with? He settles on the latter. It’ll go faster and he can go back to his drink and the rest of the shift won’t be too ruined. 

Tarkin leans forward and hisses into Krennic’s ear, breath ghosting against his neck, ‘you and I are not on friendly terms. We never have been and never will be. Your plebeian upbringing is betraying you in this regard. Shape up or I will find someone else to do your work for you. You are not irreplaceable. Just as Erso is not, though he thought himself so. Learn from his mistakes. Don’t assume too much of yourself.’ 

‘And who would you replace me with? Who would you bring up to speed in a short amount of time who has the training and technical expertise and sheer knowledge of the Death Star? Pray tell me their name. I’m eager to know.’ 

Tarkin pulls back a fraction so Krennic is forced to meet his gaze. It is fearsome. It is a blue-grey. It is the sky above Scarif when he had looked up and there had been the Death Star and he had thought he was about to die. Of course, he thinks, this damned man’s eyes remind me of that. I ended up all right, all things considered. Just a bit cheeky you know, incidentally taking out a rival colleague with their own weapon. 

‘Don’t presume too much upon  _ anything _ , Lieutenant-commander.’ 

‘Don’t worry.’ Krennic breaths out. ‘I won’t.’ 

Tarkin steps back and the distance now between them allows for air and Krennic is aware of how warm the room is and wants to escape but Tarkin is standing in his way and wearing an expression that Krennic cannot place but finds to be one that is certainly saying something he just does not know the language of the other man’s face.

‘Do we understand one another?’ Tarkin asks. 

No, Krennic thinks. ‘I believe so, governor.’ 

‘Excellent.’ 

  
Tarkin stands aside and watches as Krennic leaves. He swears that there are eyes following him all the way back to his room although every time he looks behind him there is no one there.

 

.  .  .

.


	8. Chapter 8

As the empire is working on a compressed timeline Wilken finds it confusing that in the case of the caught rebels, one of whom he might add is Leia Organa, it seems as if everything has suddenly been removed from his hands. First Tarkin walks into a private meeting Wilken was conducting with several senators about security breaches and insists that he is needed _immediately_ then he is denied even the chance to have a distinct and final say in the matter of processing Organa.

There are boxes that much be checked and forms that must be completed in order to consider a prisoner fully registered but by the way Tarkin and Lord Vader are handling it, according to the paper trail, it won’t even look like Organa had been captured which means that in the eyes of the senate and the broader empire there is no firm proof that she is a rebel. And she _must_ be a rebel. There is no other explanation for her being on that ship and Wilken is fairly certain Vader would not capture the wrong person. Especially when the chance of an Intergalactic Incident resulting is so high.

Not that the bureaucracy of the empire cannot manage Incidents. Scarif and Krennic’s general messes have always been dealt with discreetly.

He buzzes for Caruso. His secretary materializes momentarily and Wilken asks which cell it is that the princess is being held in as she has been moved since her initial processing.

‘F-657, sir.’

‘Good. I would like to schedule an interview with her concerning the missing plans.’

Caruso tilts his head, ‘would the Grand Moff be-’

‘Caruso. Tarkin may be Grand Moff and he may be governor of the Outer Rim but on this station _I_ am in charge.’

Caruso’s face seems to say ‘would you like to tell the Grand Moff that or shall I?’ Wilken ignores it. He punches furiously at his tablet and pulls up the file on Leia Organa. Caruso has yet to move.

‘Well?’ Wilken asks without looking up.

‘I’ll schedule it immediately, sir.’

‘Good.’

‘And I will pull up the relevant documentation.’

‘Thank you, Caruso.’

He clears his calendar for the next two hours and sets to work digging into the Organa files. That her family has rebel ties is implied of not out right self-evident. The problem with people like Leia and Bail is their distinct inability to be caught in the act. Getting the senate and planetary governments to behave is like training a dog, he thinks. When they shit inside you have to rub their noses in it.

 

Leia Organa imprisoned is still a woman of steel. Wilken admits this to himself. It is twenty minutes into the interview, which Caruso kept calling an ‘interrogation’ but Wilken kept saying was too strong a word, too political a word. Interview. And the woman has yet to admit anything. Her eyes are joyful. He wishes she were dead.

By the door Caruso is taking notes and Wilken reminds himself to have them confiscated once done. Not that Caruso would do anything untoward with them, for his secretary is discretion itself, but it is best to pretend nothing ever happened and that this time spent attempting to extract information from an ambassador and princess never occurred. That it slipped through a warp and disappeared itself from existence.

‘Tell me again, princess, where are the plans?’

She purses her lips and leans back against the wall. She hadn’t even bothered to stand when he entered which he thinks shows a decided lack of respect. Between her and Lieutenant-commander Krennic the obligatory, necessary hierarchy of the galaxy is going to go up in flames and then where will they all be?

‘Admiral, first, I have no idea of what you are speaking. I said as much to Lord Vader and the Grand Moff. It is not like I am suddenly going to remember something I never did or had within my possession in the interim.’

‘We have been reasonable.’

Her expression is cold. ‘Reasonable? You call leaving me to Lord Vader’s devises _reasonable_?’

‘I fail to see any harm done to your person. You aren’t telling me a farcical, dead religion has you frightened.’ He clasps hands behind his back and leans forward. ‘Tell me where the plans are.’

‘What plans? Are you building a new house? Did you get lost and need a map of the galaxy? I am growing tired of your questioning, Admiral.’

‘This impertinence is not only unwise but it is also uncalled for, young lady.’

‘I will tell you what I told Lord Vader and the Grand Moff which is that first, I know nothing about these plans you are all so fixated on and second, I am an ambassador on a mission and impeding my progress is in direct conflict with the Senate and I assure you, sir, that they will be made aware of this breach.’

He waves away the threat and turns around full circle, a slow careful movement. He wonders what will get this girl to talk for surely she knows _something_ and if he can get it out of her before Tarkin that will secure his favour with the emperor over the governor.

‘If you do not tell me what you know about the disappeared plans, or really anything at all relating to the rebels and their horrendous attacks upon the empire I will not be able to vouchsafe for your safety here.’

‘Because I was safe before you made that clear.’

He wonders if anyone else has ever been as frustrated with Leia Organa as he currently is. Tarkin came out of the interrogation with barely a ruffled look and Wilken is fairly certain that the old dog didn’t get anything from her. Vader as well. Though, he will grant, Vader is a great deal more difficult to read on account of the mask.

‘Your life is in your own hands, princess,’ he holds a finger up and wags it at her. ‘Think on that. I will be back and when I return I do hope you are more accommodating.’

‘If Vader got nothing from me do you really think you will succeed?’

He smiles, can feel the muscles around his mouth tighten and his expression around his eyes freeze.

‘We all have our ways. Some more effective than others.’

A curt nod and he bangs on the door to be let out.

Part way down the hall Caruso makes a noise in the back of his throat. It sounds suspiciously like a muffled ‘damn’ and Wilken sighs. Halts. Looks back to his secretary.

‘What?’

‘I forgot to fill in a form with the guard. It has to do with tracking of prisoner well being and treatment. I meant to do it when we first arrived but I forgot, I can do it later, sir, but as we are here-’

‘No, no go on. We must be thorough in all things. Remember, inattention goeth before the fall.’

‘Pride, sir.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s pride that goeth - never mind, sir, inattention to detail is in itself a form of pride.’

‘Quite.’

Wilken shakes his head as he continues back to his office. There is something the princess is most certainly withholding and for what reason? She is, ostensibly, loyal to the empire and so should be forthcoming. However, she is the daughter of Bail and that man has long been a source of trouble. Both before the empire and most certainly presently. Fruit falling close to the tree and all. She is much like her father, he thinks with some disgust. Meddlesome. It will not do. The rebellion must be dealt a swift blow he just hopes that he will be the one to do it and with the Death Star under his command, why shouldn’t he be? All glory belongs to him, after all, for managing it so well. He was made for greatness, he knows, his name one that was long meant to be remembered. In the future, when generations down the line think of the Death Star, of the height of imperial power, they will think not of Grand Moff Tarkin or that Thrawn or Vader, but of Admiral Wilken. His name is writ in the stars.

 

It had happened thusly:

Adkin, ‘sir, I wonder at them keeping a princess. Can that be allowed?’

Krennic, ‘it’s a dubious legal area. They are allowed to if she truly is a threat to the empire. It’s proving it that matters. And the senate doesn’t take kindly to ambassadors being randomly interrogated I’m fairly certain.’

Adkin, ‘Would they take it up with the emperor?’

Krennic, ‘Maybe. Hard to say. Where did you say she was being held again?’

Adkin, ‘I didn’t, sir.’

Krennic, ‘But if you had already said it. Where would you say she was being held again?’

Adkin, ‘F-657.’

Krennic, ‘That sigh is insubordination, Lieutenant.’

Adkin, ‘I think that’s a dubious legal area, sir.’

Krennic, ‘Quite right, too. I have the next block off, see to the droids in the lower storage levels. Make sure they are following the plans.’

He takes himself off, then. He knows Adkin is making a rude face behind him at being left to tend to the most boring area of the MEP but, he reasons, best to have her away from all of this. She is too useful to him to sacrifice in middle management politics.

Good luck is finally coming my way, Krennic thinks as he skirts through the halls towards the holding cells. There hasn’t been a person or droid since he left the F-deck into the catacombs of cell blocks. 657 is in a more interior section of the block and meant for particularly troublesome prisoners. There are natural jail-breakers. Prisoners who, no matter where you put them, always someone manage to get out. It does not overly surprise him that the princess is one of them.

Rounding the bend he is surprised to see the director’s secretary coming towards him, busily tapping away at his tablet. Krennic stops, waits to see Wilken’s dreaded face and when it doesn’t follow Caruso he stops the man.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I could ask the same as you,’ Caruso replies.

Krennic points to his rank-bars, ‘one of us is a mere lieutenant the other is lieutenant-commander.’

Caruso straightened, ‘yes sir, sorry sir. Forgive me, sir, I was otherwise occupied.’

‘I can see that. Doing what?’

‘A few last minute prisoner forms for the director.’

‘I’m sure he appreciates your diligence.’

‘Inattention to details goeth before the fall, sir.’

‘It’s pride, Lieutenant, but carry on.’

Krennic brushes past and walks a bit before glancing over his shoulder. Caruso’s retreat is already complete and he sees no sign of the younger man. Coming to the door in question he waits as the guard opens it and he steps inside.

 

Leia is in a foul mood, he can tell, and makes an exacerbated expression when she sees him enter. He stands, looks around the cell.

‘Not very nice is it, princess?’

‘I wouldn’t give it a glowing review.’

‘No window.’

‘No.’

‘Have they given you a sunlamp?’

‘No.’

‘Vitamin D supplements?’

She nods.

‘Well that’s something.’ He hums and takes a second gander about the rather limited space. ‘It is rather dreary. Could use a paint job. Do you think a gold would make it feel more warm?’

‘A blanket would help more than paint.’

He smiles at her. ‘Very good, princess. Keep a positive sense of humour, that’s the ticket.’

She is wary of him and watching him with the same expression that her father wears when suspicious in senate meetings. Which, in Krennic’s experience, is all the time.

‘What do you want?’ She asks.

‘To see how you are doing. You’re our first prisoner on board the Death Star. We’re still working out protocols and the details on containment. How’s the food?’

‘Edible.’

‘One a scale of a one to ten?’

‘Two.’

‘One being refuse from the garbage chute.’

‘Two point five.’

He nods to himself. Takes his tablet out and swipes it open. He makes a note on the food quality.

‘You didn’t come here to ask me about my comfort level,’ she looks at the rank-bars. ‘Lieutenant-commander.’

‘Call me Krennic.’

‘I’d rather not.’

He smiles again and she scowls in return. He decides that between Leia and Bail he prefers the father to the daughter. One is decidedly more communicative even when angry. But she is right, he is not here to make light chatter nor does he care particularly for her comfort.

‘I’ll cut to the chase. I know you know where the plans are, I know you know what we are talking about, and I am going to explain something to you.’ He holds up a hand. ‘Before you deny it again. Are you tired of that story? I’d be tired of it if I were you.’

‘Lucky you’re not then. And it’s the truth not a story. I’m hardly in a position to be lying to any of you.’

He folds his arms and taps fingers against chin. ‘Jedha,’ he says at last. ‘What happened at Jedha?’

Her look is one of confusion. ‘It exploded.’

‘Yes. Do you know how?’

She falters. He withholds a smile but he cannot help but think, _Gotcha_. You know how it happened but you also know the PR campaign around it.

‘A mining explosion. It was over-worked and there was an accident.’

‘Don’t go too deep into the details, princess.’ She frowns. He explains, ‘the press release was vague. I know because I wrote it. The Death Star is capable of blowing up much more than a city. How is your father?’

‘Fine.’ The wariness returns.

‘And your dear mother?’

‘She is well.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I have never had the pleasure of visiting Alderaan, you know. But I have heard that it is beautiful planet. Remarkable center of culture and learning. Your mother helped further its reputation in that regard, didn’t she?’

A cautious affirmative to this. Krennic nods.

‘Yes, yes that’s what I thought. Wouldn’t it be a shame if it were to,’ a vague hand motion. ‘Cease? Like Jedha? Scarif? What a tragedy. What a loss not only to you but to the entire galaxy as a whole. It’s a jewel in the imperial crown.’

Leia pales then. She remains very still and not even her breathing is perceptable. Her eyes are fixed on him but she is seeing through him. Through the door and the walls and the station itself. He thinks she must be seeing all the way to her home. To her family.

‘I know how the Grand Moff thinks, princess. He is playing nice for right now, for given value of nice, but if you do not make yourself useful to him and to the empire he won’t be very nice for much longer and _trust me_ you do not want to witness Tarkin being _cruel_.’

‘What do you want?’ Her voice, despite her evident fear, remains detached. As if she has disassociated herself from the situation. Divorced mind and soul from flesh and bone.

‘I want to know where the plans are, what exactly it is that the rebels took off of Scarif, how much you know about the Death Star, what Galen Erso relayed, and the location of current rebel hideouts. If you tell me these things I might be able to convince Tarkin that blowing up Alderaan is a tad...brash. He might just keep it to the imperial city. Oh! Do not fret, princess. Think of all the lives you will be saving and you will be able to rest easy knowing you have been of service to the empire.’

She does not tremble. She does not look at him. He admits that her strength is admirable and her spine is reinforced steel. Another Bail trait, although her mother was no pushover by any stretch of the imagination. Breha is as much a rock as the senator. Of course what is personal strength and fortitude and moral dignity compared to the Death Star? Nothing. We all come from stardust and to stardust we must all return.

Eventually Leia nods. A barely perceptible tilt of her head and she says, ‘I know nothing about the location of these plans you are concerned about. But I can tell you the location of the current rebel base.’

‘And the information Erso relayed?’

‘I know nothing of that.’

‘Alderaan has how many people? Two billion? Three? I’m fairly certain it’s closer to two.’

‘He said there was a weakness but never elaborated.’

‘Good wine, too. It’d be a shame about that.’

‘That is all I know.’

Krennic relaxes his stance, becomes conciliatory, ‘the location?’

She supplies it.

‘There, that wasn’t too hard was it, princess? And the location of the plans?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Imperial city population? Remind me? Your entire family is there, isn’t it?’

‘ _I don’t know_.’

He relents at this. He knows a person digging in heels when he sees one and says good day with a mockingly low bow. She is stately ice when he leaves. He thinks it’s a shame that such a talented politician will have to die. It’s a waste of a golden skill-set.

 

Wilken is part-way through his write-up on the failed interview with Organa when there is a knock at his door. He mutters, ‘enter’ and quickly saves the doc before looking at the source of interruption. Ah, it is only Caruso.

‘Yes?’

Caruso takes a step in. He rocks a fraction from left to right, stops, does it again.

‘What?’

A glance over his shoulder. Wilken is annoyed at the display. Doesn’t the man know he doesn’t have all the time in the galaxy to wait for him to find words?

‘Sir, it’s about Lieutenant-commander Krennic.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, sir, it is only returning from the cell-block I ran into him heading towards the princess’ location. I do not know if that was his intended destination but I suspect it was.’

‘That is easy enough to verify.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Wilken taps the desk and contemplates his plant. Krennic did show an inordinate amount of interest in the prisoner. What could the Lieutenant-commander have to say to Leia Organa? His attention is caught when Caruso clears his throat.

‘Only I was thinking, sir, that since the initial leak came from Galen Erso and he and Krennic were old friends, quite close for a time - never mind, sir.’

‘No, no go on.’

‘This is _pure_ speculation, sir, but perhaps Erso had help.’

Wilken almost purrs. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. Duly noted.’  
  
Caruso leaves and Wilken sits back in his chair. It would clean a lot of uncertainty up. He wonders if Tarkin is aware of Krennic’s little extracurricular activity of visiting prisoners. He doubts it very much. He pulls up the report and decides that once complete he and a certain Grand Moff are going to have a bit of a small chat about their mutual problem of Orson Krennic.


	9. Chapter 9

Leaving the princess’s cell Krennic is not running through the halls and he is not grinning but he is walking with verve and purpose and is scowling as a means to not not grin. He checks the time and thinks that he might be able to catch Tarkin before he has to return to the MEP. As usual the man is difficult to track down when wanted and impossible to get away from when unwanted. He checks the office and finds the usual annoyed secretary who mutters something about them getting pagers for each other to leave hard working officers alone then scoots down a level to the living quarters.

He buzzes and the door slides open. From inside comes a soft, ‘this had better be important.’ And Krennic thinks, You have no idea.

‘You should get a new secretary,’ he says as he rounds the corner to find Tarkin with more files projected open than should be humanly possible. ‘And they have tabs for this. So you don’t have to have everything in your face all at once.’

‘I dislike tabs. And what, pray tell, is wrong with my secretary?’

‘Nothing only I don’t think he likes me.’

‘ _I_ like him. He is discreet, efficient and doesn’t talk much.’

Krennic shrugs and plants himself in what has become his usual chair. He taps the arms, fidgets, then leans forward. He can see Tarkin watching him through the files.

‘Well?’ Tarkin asks.

‘I want to be promoted.’

Tarkin does not, it seems to Krennic, see fit to reply to this statement for the man just sits back with a patient expression.

‘I have good cause for this.’

Tarkin repeats himself.

‘Commander? That isn’t asking for much. I know double-promotions are rare but I would not object to captain if the fancy struck you.’

Krennic thinks that the fancy does not seem to be striking Tarkin so he explains that he went to see Leia. As he does a message appears on the lower projected screen and Tarkin’s face does something like an expression and Krennic thinks that he is becoming fond of the governor’s illegible face. Slowly Tarkin swipes the alert away and picks up his tablet.

‘I do hope you have a good story, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘Did Caruso rat me out? He did, didn’t he.’

‘I have no idea what you are speaking about but I am pressed for time, the director has insisted he call on me and apparently it concerns you, which does not shock me, and now I hear you have gone against my direct orders. So please,’ he spreads his hands. ‘Explain yourself. I apparently have completed all the work I am getting done this shift.’ The screens are pulled down and now they are seeing each other truly instead of the through a blue veneer.

‘I know you said that I should remain in my station. Metaphorically and literally. But I had a plan and it worked. I know I should have gone to you but I thought that time was of the essence. If the information that I supply is good, and you talk twenty-four to calm down from being angry at me for helping the empire, can I get your word that you will speak to the relative authorities re: promotion?’

Tarkin breathes out slowly. Krennic licks his lips and waits. Did Tarkin swallow? That’s weird. But now he is worrying that perhaps he is pushing his luck with this. While Tarkin has been uncommonly pleasant to be around lately it is mostly because they have work to distract themselves. And has the governor reminded him, they are not friendly with one another.

A slowly spoken concession, ‘I will consider considering it.’

Good enough. ‘She gave me the name of a rebel base.’

This jolts Tarkin as much as the man allows himself to be jolted. He sits slightly forward and his eyes widen a fraction.

‘She would not own up to receiving data plans or sending them on. She did say that she knows that there is a weakness in the Death Star but claimed to know no more than that. However, she did supply the name of a rebel base.’

‘How did you get this from her?’

‘I threatened that you would blow up Alderaan.’

Tarkin sits back again and considers Krennic for a long while. Krennic does not appreciate the stare and begins to rethink every decision that lead him to this point. He knew it was risky and he knew going to Tarkin without laying groundwork was risky but at the same time, he would rather have the man hear of his order-shirking from _him_ rather than someone like Wilken. Tarkin’s eyes are the cool blue-grey that are Scarif Eyes in Krennic’s mind but also now Death Star Schematics And Too Much Caf Eyes. Situations shift. Everything is malleable.

‘I had contemplated it,’ Tarkin says at last.

‘Great minds think alike, governor.’

‘Do not ever suggest that about the two of us ever again.’

Krennic relaxes back into the chair with a shrug. Tarkin can deny all he wants but Krennic reasons that they have a similar level of intelligence, just vastly different people aside from that.

Tarkin leans forward and pulls up a diagram of the galaxy and plugs in the codes for Dantoonie, the supposed rebel base location. Outer Rim planet, which Tarkin appreciates as it puts it under his direct authority. Discreet and underpopulated and so hardly noticeable. He recalls that the Knights of the Old Republic had once had a base there and wonders if that lingering connection influenced the rebels at all. They were the sort of maudlin sentimentality.

‘We will send a task force to investigate,’ he says to Krennic’s apparent delight. ‘As for Alderaan-’

‘There’s good wine on Alderaan. It’d be a waste.’

‘The safety of the empire does not hinge on your wine preferences.’

‘I was just making an observation.’

Tarkin is not sure how to take that when his tablet buzzes for the door. He sees Wilken and nods to Krennic.

‘The director is here. Remain where you are.’

He stands and goes to the hall closing the door to his office behind him. Krennic eyes the ventilation chute that, if he remembers his blueprints correctly, connects between the office and what Tarkin uses as a debriefing room. All good architect-engineers carry tools on them and it is not long before he has the vent cover off and moves a chair over so he can stand and listen. He thinks, Tarkin is going to kill me for this. But he figures that there are worst ways to go.

 

Wilken is shown into a small sitting room and offered a drink. The director accepts and proceeds to make himself comfortable. This means that he takes a seat and primly aligns his feet and balances the tumbler on his knee. Tarkin takes a seat opposite him and waits for the little man to begin.

‘It concerns Lieutenant-director Krennic,’ Wilken says.

Tarkin nods. He briefly wonders if he should just ask if it has to do with an undocumented visitation to the prisoner but decides to let Wilken have the floor. In his experience men like Wilken will fill the void with noise if you do not speak and sometimes they let things drop that might be of interest. Then there are men like Krennic who also fill the void with noise but usually manage to push about fifteen buttons while doing so and never say anything that is useful because they are too smart for that because _they know what you are doing_. Letting Wilken have an unadulterated stage and complete attention undermines him. Letting Krennic have the same is letting him play to his own advantage.

Wilken, ‘I went this morning to speak with the princess to see if she had learned sense and would provide us with information. Alas, she remains stubborn and silent. I am thinking that we must be more firm with her. She holds important information and we cannot release her to go gabbing to the senate about this situation without firm proof that we were in the right.’ He takes a sip of his drink. ‘We spoke for fifteen minutes and my secretary Lieutenant Caruso took notes which I have forwarded to you for your convenience.’

A pointed look at Tarkin’s lack of pulling up the notes. Tarkin wonders what Krennic is doing in his office. Probably trying to guess a password to get past his security on his tabletop desk tablet. If he can pull a fingerprint off his side of that desk he is going to run the man through the ringer. If he isn’t doing that then he is probably touching every book and trinket in that room and leaving everything slightly off center.

Wilken continues, ‘After leaving the princess to think about her future Lieutenant Caruso realised that he had forgotten to fill out a form with the guard and I allowed him to return to the cell to complete the required form. As he made to return to my office he ran into Lieutenant-commander Krennic heading towards Organa’s cell. There can be no other reason for his going there or being on that level. I brought to mind his rude interruption the other day and furthermore,’ he drops his voice down. ‘He was friends with Galen Erso while they were at the Future Programme and after, yes?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Lieutenant Caruso, upon reporting Krennic’s unorthodox movements to me, suggested that perhaps they shared political alliances as well as friendship.’

Tarkin blinks slowly. This was not what he had expected and he had completed a rather extensive list of expectations for this meeting. Wilken surprising him is in and of itself a surprise.

‘That is a bold accusation to come from a mere Lieutenant who was only at the junior-grade not a month ago.’

‘I understand, governor. But I have given it some consideration and I believe that the accusation warrants some looking into. I have Lieutenant Caruso on the case as he has shown initiative in this.’  

‘I see. And has he found anything?’

‘I only delegated the assignment to him an hour ago. But I trust he will pull up useful information.’

‘Have you asked Krennic why he was there?’

‘Not as of yet.’

‘Did he say anything to your secretary?’

‘Nothing of use.’

‘So, based on little evidence beyond a hunch that your secretary has you have launched an investigation into a man who, to my rather extensive knowledge, has never shown an inkling of preference for the rebel cause or a predilection for defection. The former director has many faults, as we are all well aware, but I would not put treason down as one of them. But, hunches are often based upon a collection of unnoticed, except by our unconscious mind, happenstances. So perhaps there is some merit to it. He may proceed but with caution and for only five days. If there is nothing at the end of that the case is closed.’

Wilken makes to complain but Tarkin colds up a hand, ‘I am a very busy man, director. We will reconvene later to discuss whatever developments your secretary finds. Allow me to show you to the door.’

Wilken stands and leaves his drink only partially completed. The legs of the liquor run down the side of the glass. The amber of them catches the light. Refract the colour of a dying sun.

 

Tarkin returns to his office to find a furious Krennic who is pacing until the door is closed then he is fuming up in Tarkin’s face.

‘You allowed it!’

‘So you were listening in. Through the ventilation? I need to have that fixed.’

‘You can’t! I won’t allow it!’

‘The ventilation being fixed or the investigation into your conduct?’

‘Both.’ Krennic hisses. He wonders if he killed Tarkin here whether or not he’d have time enough to hide the body. He is aware that the governor is looking at him with the same expression from their spat about the prisoners. He cannot think what that expression means for it clearly means _something_. ‘I am not a traitor. You know that.'

‘What I know or do not know is of little matter. If you have nothing to hide then you should not be concerned. However, what I am annoyed about concerning your little stunt is that we now must be more secretive about the reviewing of the plans.’

‘Why don’t you and Wilken do it? Since you’re -’

Tarkin spins him so he is up against a wall. Again. This room is too warm, Krennic thinks distractedly. And my uniform uncomfortable. And Tarkin far too close. Tarkin licks his lips. Krennic swallows.

‘Do not worry, Lieutenant-commander,’ Tarkin leans forward so he is purring against Krennic’s ear and their chests are touching and Krennic has an arm pinned behind him and the other cannot move because Tarkin’s grip is a vice and he has decided that he should do a lot of equations in his head right now. And take deep, slow breaths. ‘I do not think you’re a rebel sympathiser. You’re far too self-centered for grand gestures of idealism.’

‘And they keep blowing up my buildings,’ Krennic murmurs. ‘Can’t be having with that.’

‘No,’ Tarkin shifts his weight and Krennic can hear the fabric of their uniforms and it sounds very loud and damn it has been a long time since he’s been laid if this is what he is thinking about. ‘We can’t be having with that. We also can’t be having with you making my life difficult, understood Lieutenant-commander?’

Krennic purses his lips. Suffers a small sigh to escape. Mutters that it is understood. Thinks that he is _distinctly_ aroused and that it is very embarrassing and if Tarkin would let him leave he could go and have a wank before going on shift.

‘I didn’t catch that, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘Oh fuck you.’

Tarkin smirks. Krennic wrenches his hand free and quickly leans up, awkwardly given the angle, and presses their mouths together. It is messy because of the angle and because Krennic’s neck hurts from the angle and then it adjusts itself and Tarkin’s body is entirely against his and his arm that is pinned against the wall has fallen asleep. Not gentle and Tarkin is harsh and bruising and Krennic wants every second of it. 

‘What that a suggestion, Lieutenant-commander?’ Tarkin breaths as his hand goes between them unbuckling Krennic’s belt then dipping under the uniform tunic and tugging at trouser buttons.

‘An order.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Oh fine, Krennic thinks. You can give the orders. Tarkin seems to read the thought in his face and hauls him over to the desk and plants Krennic on his back. Sitting up Krennic undoes Tarkin’s belt and can hear it hit the floor and it sounds loud but it can’t be. He is pushed back down. Tarkin is yanking his trousers down so there is now the cool desk surface against his skin and Krennic tries to repay the favour but his hands are pushed away as he his pulled so his ass is against the edge of the desk. A pause and Tarkin leans over him, opens a drawer and rummages for a second.

‘If you have lube in here I am going to be very impressed.’

It’s not a kiss so much as a bite. Krennic takes this as both a confirmation as well as a note that he should probably stop talking. The collar of his uniform is loosed and the bites continue down his neck and once there, a space that is easily hidden, they become harder and his breath hitches. He wants to moan but keeps it back, instead insistently moving his hips to cause friction as some sense of relief. And oh fuck he can feel Tarkin hard against him and he presses up more firmly. Wants to rub himself all over the man if possible.

I’m old enough to know that rubbing doesn’t cause relief, he thinks as this tactic makes things worse. Then, Tarkin flips him so he is on his stomach and he appreciates the feeling of having his feet on the ground and doubly appreciates the fingers that are now pressing in and stretching him. It is not done particularly gently but he thinks he doesn’t care. He thinks that he’s ready to be fucked at this point by any part Tarkin so desires to shove up his ass.

A ragged, ‘please.’

Tarkin sneers. ‘Desperate?’

‘Would you want me bored?’

‘I’d prefer you quiet.’

‘How dull.’

A sharp slap to his ass as fingers are removed. Krennic tells himself to not smirk. He doesn’t think it works and _oh_ is he desperate. Tarkin’s hands are on his hips as he presses his prick in. A pause then a firm push and Krennic muffles a moan into his arm. It’s too difficult with clothes and the desk and the angle to spread his legs further but if he could they’d be so wide and he’d be making obscene noises and saying obscene things about how it feels and how he wants more and why isn’t Tarkin fucking him properly yet.

‘Ask politely.’ It’s whispered into his hair. Breath ghosts against the back of his neck.

‘Please fuck me.’

A second slap against his ass. Krennic bites his sleeve.

‘Please fuck me, governor.' Because someone really ought to, he doesn't add.

Krennic hears a hum which he assumes to mean his answer is satisfactory. Hands return to his hips and Krennic feels the prick being pulled out then thrust back in and again and on and it’s a nice rhythm with balls slapping against him and his breath sounding very loud and poor uniform sleeve being bitten.

He manages as gasp of, ‘harder.’ A pause. ‘Harder please, governor.’

It becomes harder as the angle changes and his hips lifted up slightly and he wants to come, he wants to come so badly but he doesn’t want it to stop. When he does, finally, it is into Tarkin's hand he is thinking of Tarkin’s eyes which means he is thinking of Scarif and finding that it doesn’t sting as much as it had. After all, he muses as Tarkin shudders on top of him, I probably would have done the same.

And really, they are pleasant eyes. Situations shift, after all. Everything is malleable.

 

 

At the door, the hall way is dark. Krennic has just sent a message to Adkin saying he would be skipping this shift on account of a sudden flu. 

'Commander?' He asks. Tarkin gives him a look. 'At least I got information out of her. Something you and Lord Vader failed to do.' 

'Don't push your luck.' Tarkin looks at the feed connected to the hall cams. He nods, 'go now.' Krennic glances back and there it is, breifly, fleeting before the door closes, that expression. He believes now that he is beginning to understand what it means. He isn't sure he likes it. 

 


	10. Chapter 10

There is always work to do, things to see to and situations to be sorted. Tarkin feels that it is best if he is the one doing most of the sorting, handling, and working. This business with the rebels and the emperor’s obsession with internal intrigue is hampering his work pattern and cutting into his duties as governor. His hand hovers over the tablet, in a tentative gesture he books his D shift off knowing that if he does not get some sleep he will be even less productive. A second later he changes it back to On Duty.

No rest for the wicked and he can sleep when he’s dead.

He wonders how effective the energy drinks Krennic is so dedicated to are. He wonders if he should do a trial run. He could compare them to caf over the next twenty-four and see if the crash and burn at the end of their run is as rough as it looks. Krennic, at least, is not a human who should be left without access to caffein.

Going to his message box he begins to organize it according to priority when a call comes through from the emperor. Tarkin quickly clears his tablet and accepts the request. A projection of the emperor beams up from his desktop and spins until they are face to face.

‘Progress with Wilken?’ The emperor wants to know once they through the usual formalities.

‘I don’t think he is anything more than what he appears to be which is a rather banal paper pushing has-been Admiral.’

‘A cold assessment.’

Tarkin gives a slight shrug, ‘I speak as I find.’

‘You were more suspicious of his motives when we first spoke.’

‘I was. Besides rather typical political maneuvering to better his own position, and those of his friends, I do not sense any malice towards the empire as a whole from him. What I will say is that considering the very real threat of rebel incursion, and now that we have ascertained that he is not a threat, same going for the other members of the council, shall we return to the proper run of this station?’

The emperor shakes his head, ‘no, not yet my friend. You are more use to me in this lateral position than in direct command. Do not worry, there is time enough for that. I sense a disturbance in the Death Star and wish you to continue your surveillance. Anything further to report?’

‘We are investigating a lead for the rebellion. The princess has provided us with a location and I have sent a task force to follow up.’

‘Excellent. I am pleased to hear that she is seeing sense. I trust it was not too difficult to convince her of her own best interests?’

‘It only required applying the correct leverage. Do you think we ought to send a firmer message to the galaxy?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘A demonstration of the Death Star’s full capability. There are whispers of the true circumstances of Jedha’s destruction but with such bold moves from the rebels I think it is time to show an unquestionable act of power.’

‘Lieutenant-commander Krennic said that it was capable of destroying entire planets.’

Tarkin thinks that the emperor and Krennic share a similar excitement over the prospect of blowing up planets. It’s an excitement that he does not quite understand beyond the self-evident usefulness of the persuasive power of sheer, unadulterated destruction. It lacks the thrill of a battle, the finesse of a well executed maneuver.

‘That was his intimation. If, indeed, Jedha was just a fraction of this station’s capabilities I see no reason to doubt his claim.’

‘Very well, Wilhuff. I give you leave to test the station as a statement of the empire’s stance towards the rebellion and rebel sympathisers. Will you test it on the base the princess provided us?’

‘Dantooine is too far, my lord.’

‘You’re right. That is far too remote.’ The emperor pauses in thought and Tarkin waits. A part of him does think Alderaan will make for an excellent example of what happens to those who side with rebellion and chaos over empire and order but the planet has natural resources useful, still, to the empire. Its moons also serve as a strategic base and with Alderaan gone their orbits become uncertain. Their usefulness no longer guaranteed. The emperor at last muses, ‘we can do without Alderaan, I believe.’

‘That was the leverage we were using against the princess.’

‘I assumed so. Do you think she has more to tell us?’

‘Much more.’

‘Do what is necessary regarding her. Perhaps make her watch. And once she has told you everything she knows I see no reason to prolong her life. She will be of no more use to the empire.’

‘Understood, my lord.’

‘Keep me informed of all developments.’

Tarkin leans back into his chair after the emperor signs off and contemplates the line about the emperor sensing a disturbance. If Palpatine was feeling a disturbance in the force on the Death Star that is cause for concern as it implies lingering Jedi power. At least, that is Tarkin’s first interpretation. The second would be conspiracy and one large enough to impact the force, assuming that is how the force worked. He was not entirely clear on this point but, if it is something along those lines, it would explain the emperor’s obsession with the internal disputes aboard the station.

Yet he has heard and seen little to suggest such a thing. Leaning forward he buzzes for his secretary and the dour faced man appears in the office.

‘Sir?’

‘I want all video feed of officers from the last two weeks.’ He draws up a quick list and hands it over. ‘Particularly these ones.’

‘All video feed, sir?’

‘ _All_.’

‘Consider it done.’

  


Down in the MEP-bay Lieutenant Adkin scoots past Linden with a fresh caf as her colleague attempts to not scream and chuck his tablet across the bay.

‘Trouble routing the cables?’ She asks as he kicks the wall.

‘All of them are red. But different shades of red.’

She slurps her caf and makes a sympathetic expression. Electrical anything has never been her specialty and the Lieutenant-commander has been very insistent that it is one of his team that deals with all finalizing details for the bay. It is weird to her, that they might finally be completing it. Not all of his additions, to be sure, but the main of the bay will be done and completely functioning within days. Most of her professional career has been spent on the Death Star project and finally seeing it come to a close leaves her with a sense of vertigo.

‘Can you do this?” Linden asks.

‘No,’ she snorts. ‘I’m terrible with that sort of thing.’

‘But you might be able to discern the colours better than I can.’

‘Why would that be? They all look equally red to me.’

He scowls, kicks the panel again and mutters that their supervisor is probably evil and never sleeps and stays up devising ways to torture them and it almost certainly mad. She says that she doesn’t know about all of that, she rather likes the man.

‘That’s only because he’s from Lexrul.’

‘No. He really is all right. I mean high strung and insane but all right for all that. Wouldn’t go out on a limb for him but I’ve had worse supers.’

‘I haven’t. He completely threw out all my suggestions to the additions on this thing. All of them!’

‘No he didn’t.’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘No he kept a couple.’

‘Oh yeah the floor patterns. Because that’s going to look great in my portfolio after all this. ‘Designed floor patterns of a fucking MEP-bay’. Yeah that’s what I need going forward. He’s a prat.’

She shrugs.

‘And an ass.’

She shrugs again.

‘And a jerk.’

She sips her caf.

‘And how the fuck did he get this far.’

She points, ‘he’s talented.’

‘Yes. But an asshole.’

‘Sure, he is, but the Grand Moff isn’t exactly all cheer and roses and he’s the second most powerful man in the empire. I’m not sure being nice matters much in these cases. You know that whole thing of nice folks finish last.’

‘Going to throw a wrench at his face.’

‘Don’t, you’ll get in trouble and then I won’t have my lunch buddy anymore. I need gossip from the sick-bay crew and I only get it through you.’

Linden makes a face and sits beside her on the work table. She watches him pick his nails. Leaning over she nudges him with her shoulder. ‘Hey, man.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘About what?”

‘About my taking your place. As Krennic’s second.’ In her head Adkin is telling herself that she does not have to apologize for this. For being better and having a super who sees that she is better but she hears herself saying ‘sorry’ a second time and Linden is still annoyed at everything and everyone and especially the all-red cables and she feels like she has to make him feel better even though she knows it’s not her job.

 

The bay door sliding open an hour later reveals Caruso who Adkin only dimly recognizes as the man following the director around with a rather hen-pecked expression. Caruso steps through, looks up at the ceiling, which is what all first-time visitors to the MEP-bay do, then looks around at the space.

‘Very impressive,’ he says walking over to her. ‘You all do this?’

‘We designed and built it, yes.’

‘Nice. Good work.’ He keeps looking around.

‘Can I help you?’ She wonders if he is lost. Most people do not come down here by choice. Even being on the premises of the MEP has the potential to curse your career.

‘Perhaps. Lieutenant-commander Krennic not here?’

‘Ah, no. No, uh, I’m not sure where he is. It’s D-shift so he possibly has it off. I can message him if you would like, he’s probably still working.’

‘Not necessary, lieutenant, but thank you.’ He circles around her but keeps looking at the ceiling and the walls and the floor. She catches Linden’s eye and his face clearly says: what does the wierdo want? She conveys confusion. Linden turns back to the current scourge of his life, the red cable cabal.

‘You like working here?’ Caruso asks.

‘Um, yes. Yeah, it’s not bad. It was my first big project after graduation.’

‘Wow, impressive.’

She dislikes his tone when he says ‘impressive’. It strikes her as condescending. In her head she can hear her aunt’s voice reminding her that punching people is not always the correct response to tense interpersonal relationships. Nor is being snippy.

‘It’s a step in the right direction,’ she says.

‘Indeed. And how is Krennic settling in?’

‘Well enough.’

‘He isn’t too overbearing?’

Sometimes, she thinks. ‘He has high expectations.’

Behind Caruso Linden drops his pliers. They clatter on the floor. 

‘He works a lot, I take it.’

‘Yes. I think he only takes shifts off because it’s mandated by health and safety. He’s very...focused.’

‘And I hear he has taken you under his wing.’

She isn’t sure how to respond and so makes a noncommittal noise.

Caruso continues, ‘do you know if he has any friends? Close acquaintances?’

‘We don’t talk about our personal lives.’

‘Does he talk about Galen Erso at all?’

Now she is doubly confused. She shakes her head no and cannot remember him having ever mentioned Erso.

‘And Scarif? Does he ever discuss Scarif?’

‘No. But why would he? We just work together. Again, we don’t talk about personal things.’

‘Of course. But Scarif isn’t personal, is it? It was a battle, we all witnessed it. Some of us even fought down there. That’s hardly personal.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that. I just meant that we haven’t talked about it. Because all we talk about is the bay and things relating to our work here.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Caruso looks around again. ‘Is that his desk?’

‘Yes.’

Adkin follows him as he walks over racking her brain about protocol and how to address the secretary of the director of the Death Star when the secretary is perhaps out of line. She comes up blank.

Caruso glances at papers and lifts one up when Adkin pushes it back down.

‘I don’t think it’s proper to be looking through his papers when he isn’t present.’

‘No, you’re right. I was just curious.’ He hums. Eyes the locked cabinet under the desk. Skims what is visible. Picks up a model of the galaxy and turns it over in his hand. ‘Do you know about his father? Oh wait, you don’t discuss personal things. So you don’t know and obviously he would not know that your inspiration for joining the military was your aunt, who is dead and he also would not know that you have a younger sister looking to follow in your footsteps and you would not know that his parents were happy to ship him off to the Futures Programme to have someone else raise him for a time.’ He sets the model of the galaxy back down. ‘His father’s name is Nial and his grandfather is Callen Krennic.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Nial has questionable sympathies, although we believe he has never acted on them. Purely arm-chair politics. His son, Orson, however has always struck the empire as being decidedly unpolitical.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘In your entirely professional conversations, that are never personal, has he ever mentioned his father or grandfather to you?’

‘No. Not beyond saying that his father would know what to do about the garbage chute.’

Caruso nods slowly, to himself. He taps the model galaxy and looks again at the papers on the desk. He says very carefully, ‘the empire is always looking to promote the best and the brightest, Lieutenant Adkin. We are always under siege, under threat from external forces as well as internal. If you should ever hear anything of interest, from anyone, pertaining to the safety of this battle station and the empire as a whole you will inform me and the director immediately?’

‘Of course.’

‘The powers that be would look kindly on any such act in considering future promotions.’

She nods, she understands. What she does not understand is why Caruso is subtly asking her to spy on Krennic. The man is staunchly imperial, she thought. Caruso thanks her for her time, says that the bay is lovely. Shame if anything should ever happen to it.

 

It’s back up through the discreet stairwell that no one takes and Krennic sticks his head around the corner to the main hall towards Tarkin’s suite. Empty. He messages ‘door better be unlocked because my not-being-seen-luck is going to run out one of these days’.

A quick reply, ‘your knowledge of my whereabouts is uncomfortable.’

Entering the office in the suite Krennic says, ‘there are _literally_ three locations you are most likely to be at on this station. The bridge, your office, or here. There are video feeds of all but one of these locations. Schematics?’

‘I see I need to adjust my life and make it less routine.’

‘Please don’t, I have it figured out already. Caf?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Good, more for me.’

Tarkin sits back and stares at Krennic. It is that look. The one Krennic couldn’t read for the longest time. He says, ‘you’re doing it.’

‘I’m doing what?’

‘You’re weird stare. I couldn’t read it for a while but I think I know what it means and we really should do work and not fuck on your desk as enjoyable as it was during the last encounter.’

Tarkin scoffs. What a ridiculous place Krennic’s mind must be. What outlandish conclusions he leaps to. Krennic replies that he isn’t averse, just maybe a few more hours of work first? Then a fuck. Then he has to go back on shift. Tarkin snorts. Krennic asks, ‘what?’ and Tarkin wonders aloud if the Lieutenant-commander ever sleeps.

‘I do. I take a lot of brief twenty minute power-naps. My former office chair was fantastic for this. I hope Wilken knows what a treasure he has.’

‘It’s a wonder you sleep at all with your caffeine consumption.’

‘It’s what makes me human. Without it I’m a veritable monster. Anyway, I have other things I could be doing but as we’re almost through the plans I thought we could keep on that. Am I allowed to analyse my own correspondence with Erso?’

Tarkin pulls up the schematics and divides the station according to where they had last left off. ‘No, we’ve discussed this already. I will be reading them over as an outside set of eyes will be able to catch more.’

‘I disagree.’

‘I have already registered your point of view on this matter, Lieutenant-commander.’

Krennic makes a face. But he knows this is not the time to push it and truly he isn’t sure Tarkin’s opinion of him will be that drastically affected by what he reads. It is not that Krennic worries that the answer to their inquiries will be in the correspondence but that Tarkin will see all the personal messages with titles along the lines of ‘RE: shoe+tree+angry marsupial incident’ because how can you explain that to a Grand Moff? And oh it is not that he is ashamed or embarrassed, because at least he has friends unlike Tarkin, even if this friend proved to be a terrible piece of traitorous human garbage, but some things are only meant to be seen by friends and others wouldn’t understand.

Before Galen died, and before the betrayal fiasco, the last message Krennic had received from him was a picture of a cat with a Lexrul-flag bandana and having Tarkin see that. Having Tarkin _know_ that this exchange happened. That Galen Erso saw a large fluffy cat with a Lexrul bandana and a silly hat on and evidently thought: _Orson would like this_ , and having Tarkin analyze that exchange for treason is not something he wishes to experience.

But experience it he will.

The entire friendship itself is something Krennic has not poked too much. Going down the spiral of everything being a lie, everything being a cover, every single bleeding moment a falsity is not a path he wants to walk down at the moment. If ever. How do you unravel yourself from such a thing? Treason against the empire sure, but to betray a friend? A man you have known for longer than you havenot known him? Their lives were too intertwined, too bound up in each other for this to be something he can parse in a single setting.

When did it begin? He wonders fleetingly as he sifts through the next layer of the Death Star. When did their friendship end for Galen in all but appearances? When did Galen wake up and decide that he no longer cared? No longer gave a royal fuck about what they had? When did Galen decide that Orson didn’t matter and their friendship was nothing to him and everything else not worth a two-penny damn?

He can’t think about this right now. Maybe Tarkin is doing it right. Maybe not having friends is the way to go if losing one rips you apart so when you think about them your chest feels hollow. He knew all the tropes around the end of a romance and lovers wounding one another but he has never, to his knowledge, seen anything on the pain of a friend taking out your heart and putting it in a blender because somehow he felt that his mere conscience was more important than everyone else around him and every relationship he ever had and worth the death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives. For a conscience. What a privileged world Galen must have lived in. What a selfish world.

‘I need a drink,’ he mutters.

‘Help yourself.’ Tarkin waves to a drinks cabinet towards the back of the office.

Krennic considers but decides against it. He can count on one hand how many shifts he has until he’s on planet-side for a few days and he’ll drink himself into a proper mournful stupor then and rail against the frailty of loyalty and love.

He needs to distract himself. He focuses through the projection on Tarkin and eventually the man meets his gaze.

‘How was hunting pirates?’ He asks.

Tarkin was not expecting this question. Krennic can tell by the minute movement of his head backwards. He feels pleased that at least he can read _this_ in Tarkin.

Krennic continues, ‘I imagine it to be exciting. Something out of a fairy tale.’

‘Hardly.’

‘Come now, I’m sure you have some stories from your time. What’s the weirdest thing that ever happened? The thing that you couldn’t make up. So weird it can’t possibly be fiction.’

Tarkin lifts his lip in a half-sneer. Krennic persists. He insists that he wants to hear all about it because a man cannot hunt pirates without having _something_ to say for it. At last Tarkin sighs and gives in.  
  
‘There was time I was planet side and there was this rather vicious marsupial-type rodent-’


	11. Chapter 11

On Lexrul there is a group of people who follow certain precepts to their life. They revere asceticism, go about in thin robes, live simply within their communes and avoid communicating with those they deem as Other. Which, in Krennic’s experience, is everyone who is not them. Reviling sexual-based reproduction the only way they gain followers is to convert new members which is at odds to their avoidance of those without of their community. Fiorites is the term he had grown up hearing them called for they do have a name for themselves but they rarely divulge it to others.

‘It’s supposed to bring death,’ Adkin replies.

They’re reviewing plans for the armoury bay above the MEP and a discussion of refracted light play made its way into a conversation on faith. Adkin had asked if Krennic believed in anything outside of himself and the empire and he had replied that he might be eccentric by some measures but he’s hardly foolish.

‘What is?’

‘If you hear their name. It’s a very morbid sort of group.’

‘Cult, Lieutenant.’

‘Are they? I suppose. Then would the Jedi be a cult?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I think that you are applying a very loose understanding of the word “cult” to these people. They have a set of beliefs, they follow them in their quiet way and hardly bother anyone else.’

Krennic pulls up the schematics for the armoury and flips through them. ‘They’re keen on that, though. Death. Wasn’t it a group of Fiorites who killed themselves thirty-odd years ago? Drank the wrong blue milk.’

‘Fringe group, sir. They were lead by some extremist of their sect and believed that the universe was ending and the only way to avoid obliteration in the ultimate End was to pre-date that ultimate End. Has to do with how they understand time and space and materiality.’

‘But you’re dead either way. Does it matter if you’re killing yourself in a desert or if you die with the Universe? Death is the end result.’

‘Yes, sir. But they have a lot of complicated beliefs around what happens after death. There are three ages and according to most Fiorists, including the um, “mainstream” ones, we’re at the end of the second age and we have to do something to precipitate the third.’

‘Like what?’

‘Varies. Some say we must begin a massive, universe-wide war, others say that we all must become Fiorists and follow the Light. I’m a bit dodgy on the details.’

Krennic hums. Thinks that it’s all ridiculous and while he doesn’t subscribe to the religion of the Jedi at least he’s seen the power of the force. This sounds like all of that bullocks but without the political power and what’s the point in believing in something if you don’t get anything out of it? This he posits to Adkin who shrugs.

‘I think that’s the point of faith, sir. It’s supposed to be like falling.’

‘Absolute rubbish. How do you know all of this?’

She shrugs, ‘I had a brief flirtation with turning to ethnographic studies, sir. Particularly removal-extremism. How people break from broader society in an extreme measure, what precipitates it, what are the outcomes, group dynamics and so on. And particularly the role of isolationist doctrine and, naturally, personality cults.'

‘So you turned from that to...architecture?’

‘Architecture is an extension of the human condition, sir. It’s representative of the broad strokes of any given society.’

‘You know, Lieutenant, you’re possibly too smart for your own good.’

‘Yes, sir, I’ve heard that before.’

He collapses the schematics and unplugs the data-key. ‘But don’t let that stop you.’

 

Krennic puts the madness of the Fiorites and others like them down to the desert. Lexrul is a contradictory planet with harsh desert clashing against lush rain-forest which dips down to warm oceans and all of it filled with things that do their best to kill you. Cities generally hug that coastline and keep to the exterior of the three main continents because everyone knows that the interior can kill a man. Drive him to insanity. A desert is not silent in the way that mountains are not silent in the way that any landscape on any planet is not silent. There is wind and trees and creatures clattering in their own spheres, making noise, living, even if there is no human present to provide them with true existence through hearing and knowing and seeing.

But the desert is not a world for mankind. The perception of emptiness, although not true, invades thoughts and clings to your mind and your bones so you ache with loneliness. There is a claustrophobia to the desert. To that sky and the land around you harsh and red which work as well as any wall to close in and compound down upon a mind. Men go to the desert to die or to go mad in the belief that the madness is enlightenment. Krennic wonders if there is not already the seeds of their eventual descent already growing in their minds before they leave civilization for the wilderness.

Nial had spoken of the call. That he had been a young man and had once wanted to venture out to the desert in a vain attempt at conquering but mankind cannot conquer what made it. Krennic thought that the conclusion was faulty but did not push the point. He had then asked his father what he imagined desert-induced madness to be like and Nial had replied, ‘oh, rather like falling I shouldn’t wonder.’

The sigil of the Fiorites is a red circle with a line ascending upwards that loops around and goes to the right a little. The circle is usually coloured in. It’s supposed to be the desert sun with mankind on top. In the way that mankind likes to be on top of everything from mountains to one another. Falling, Krennic thinks with disgust, it’s a terrible position to be in.

He retires to his room, thinks that Caruso needs to learn to be more discreet when going through someone’s personal effects, and passes out from exhaustion.

  
  
  


It is part-way through the camera-files on Admiral Wilken when Tarkin receives notice that the task-force has returned from Dantooine. Marking his spot in the tape he buzzes the leader of the task-force through.

‘Should we wait for Admiral Wilken, sir?’ The captain asks.

‘No need, you can report directly to me, Captain Moor.’

‘I have video surveillance for you, if you would like to see the state of the Dantooine facilities, sir.’

Tarkin motions for the captain to use the tablet and soon a silent projection appears of a clearly long abandoned, although quite sophisticated base.

‘As you can see, sir, there is no sign of activity at this base. We scanned the entirety of Dantooine and found no other structures or places of habitation. There are no tunnels under the surface or cave-systems that would allow for the rebels to hide from detection. The planet itself is habitable to humans without any support systems.

‘Once we ascertained that the rebels were no longer in occupation of the base we investigated and,’ he changes files to an interior visual of the base. ‘I would estimate that this base has not seen human occupation in three to five years. However, despite the state of disrepair you can see the high level of order and sophistication. I would wager that that the rebels are running their para-military troops like a traditional, state-supported military. The manuals we found, which we have scanned and I have forwarded to you, governor, indicate the typical hierarchy of military command. The only major difference appears to be the inclusion of alien races in their ranks, but that is hardly news.’

‘Excellent work, captain. Was there any indication where they have relocated to?’

‘No, sir, we only found references to ‘Island II’ which I take to mean base-II located on another planet, possibly in another system entirely. Their codes are sophisticated and will take time to crack. Shall I make that top priority for my men?’

‘Yes, we need to gather as much information as possible and even out-of-date data might prove useful. Three to five years you say?’

‘Yes, sir. If I was pushing my estimate possibly two. But their technology is too dated, and the programs the systems run on are too dated, to have had them there before that. Not too mention dust, debris, and vegetation growth.’

‘Fine. I think we had best assume your initial estimate of three years to be accurate. I will review the files myself. I think it best if you take half your men and do some preliminary scans on this list of planets,’ a chart is pulled up. ‘Our latest intel suggests that these are the most likely hide-aways for our rebels. We knew their ship operations were advanced, it would be nice to know how far their ground operations have come.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And have your best men work on the codes. I want them broken as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, sir. I have three to suggest, the rest will come with me.’

‘Good, keep me informed.’

Moor exits and Tarkin returns to skimming the videos of Wilken’s movements. That the princess lied does not surprise him. That she actually provided a planet with a base on it, however, is unexpected. Perhaps she knew Dantooine to be mostly uninhabited and so little risk should imperial ire be incited against the planet. The compassion of the decision would be in character for her.

Well, he thinks, the time is as good as any to begin the operation against Alderaan. He pulls up the contact for imperial ambassador to the planet and messages him that he is needed in Coruscant that evening, acknowledge receipt of message. A minute later the ambassador replies, ‘received. I will head out on the next ship. Should be there in seven hours. Should I bring the entire retinue?’

Tarkin replies affirmative, runs through his mind of the imperial personnel left on Alderaan and has his secretary recall them all as discreetly as possible. While this might, nay _will,_ provide some warning to the insightful such as the Organas there is little hope of them mounting any sort of resistance against the empire.

On the screen Wilken walks down the hall towards Leia’s cell. Tarkin checks the date-stamp and sees that this is shortly before Krennic’s own visit. Behind Wilken walks Caruso busily filling out forms on his tablet. He highly doubts that Wilken is behind the emperor’s feared leak. He turns the video off to complete later. Other than going through the Death Star piece by piece this has got to be one of the more boring intel-gathering projects he has ever done. Before leaving he pulls up the MEP-bay and can only see Lieutenants Adkin and Linden along with a few droids. He tabs to the Armoury and finds it empty. Krennic must be in his quarters. Just as well, he thinks, I have a feeling he is going to have opinions about all of this.

  


The bridge straightens up when he appears and Admiral Ozzel is at the helm. He quickly steps aside as Tarkin strides forward.

‘Everything is working perfectly, sir.’ Ozzel says. Tarkin’s eyes are on the screen and the resplendent Alderaan quadrant in the distance.

‘The emperor would have us pay a visit to Alderaan, admiral. Please begin preparations for hyperdrive.’

‘Is Director Admiral Wilken aware of this local-change, sir?’

‘The order is from the emperor, Admiral, that is all you need to know.’

Ozzel frowns and Tarkin wonders, idly, if the man is actually going to push the point but evidently self-preservation and good-sense win the day and Ozzel turns back to the staff and gives the command to begin preparations for the jump. Due to their close proximity to a planet the gravitational pull causes some issue and there is a shudder, the sound of joints adjusting to the sudden change before they shoot forward into space.

  
  


Waking up with a jolt Krennic rolls over and fumbles for his tablet. First the time display and he mentally curses whoever decided that something was urgent enough to require them to go into hyperdrive when he still had another forty-minutes of his nap remaining.

Swiping open the tablet he pulls up messages and sees one notifying all personnel aboard the Death Star to clean out their Received Voice Recordings boxes as it’s eating up the memory banks. If you don’t the IT Department will hunt you down and no one wants that. He pulls his up and deletes a few. Getting bored he returns to the inbox and sees another message from the Social Committee - ah! So Wilken and Tarkin have kept the moral-boosting, incredibly awkward Social Committee active. This entertains him and he clicks through to see a general invitation to a trivia-hour at the bar during the A-shift for those free and interested. He tabs back and finds a message chain of everyone saying “thank-you” in reply-alls for an apparent hologram night he had missed.

‘People need to not hit reply-all,’ he grumbles deleting the entire whackful of messages. ‘That’s message etiquette 101 I swear.’

Returning to the Voice Messages he continues through deleting the out of date and irrelevant. He comes to one from a month ago from Galen. He stares at it for a long time. Part of his mind telling him to listen to it as it might have information pertaining to the weakness in the battle station. Not that Galen would leave a message going, ‘hello Orson, how are you, by the way I just wanted to let you know that I have installed a deliberate weak point in the Death Star and its location is X.’ He opens it up and lets the recording play. Nothing but a mention of sending out for a new delivery of various supplies and he’d be forwarding the expense report to finance.

Sending out a new delivery. The bleeding delivery shuttle pilot. He rubs his eyes. Wants to scream, Fuck you and fuck everything. Wants to throw his tablet across the room. Perhaps he should let Tarkin go through all the correspondence if one message makes him want to bash heads in. Hindsight, he calms himself, it’s all because of hindsight. No one, not even Tarkin, would have read _anything_ into that message. It is, quite literally, the most innocuous message in the world.

He hits ‘save’.

He continues through a few more, one from Esma and Nial wondering when he was going to visit next, another from an obscure cousin that he thinks was an accidental message-dial and various relating to work.

What was I doing? He thinks. Oh yes, the hyperdrive. Who the fuck woke me up.

The system reporting all movement and destination intents of the Death Star reports the coordinates and Krennic very, slowly closes his eyes. He breaths out. The information was wrong. The bloody, fucking information was bleeding, for fuck’s sake can’t he catch a break, was bleeding wrong.

Swinging legs over the bed he pulls uniform tunic back on, adjusts his hair and stalks off towards the princess’ cell.


	12. Chapter 12

If Leia is expecting a visitor it is not apparent. She is all shock when Krennic slides the door open and stalks in. She sits up, adjusts her tunic, touches her hair, sneers down her nose at him but does it in a polite manner which Krennic thinks even Tarkin would be impressed by it.

‘You lied,’ he hisses. He wants to throttle her.

‘I don’t know what -’

‘Save it, Princess. You lied. We know you lied. We’re heading to Alderaan right now. Do you want to see?’ He pulls out his tablet. ‘I can show you our route and estimated time of arrival. Your parents have hours to live. Isn’t that nice.’

She sits very still. The only movement is her smoothing her tunic. He doesn’t think she is aware that she is doing so.

He opens his tablet and goes to the ETA of the Death Star in the Alderaan quadrant. ‘Five hours, princess. What can a person do in five hours to make their life worth its abrupt end? Not much. And of course your parents don’t have the luxury of knowing that they’re about to die.’ He pauses in performed contemplation. ‘Of course, _you_ have the comfort of knowing that _they_ didn’t know that you could have saved them. Something little to keep you warm during all those cold nights in space.’

He must admit that she hasn’t trembled yet impresses him. That she hasn’t done anything except smooth her tunic. That she hasn’t changed her polite-sneer. Then, a jerking head movement away. She looks at the wall and swallows while blinking fiercely. There, he smiles. There it is.

‘I don’t know where the data is. I don’t know where the rebels are. I _promise_ that is the truth.’

He scowls, steps forward and leans so he is close to her face. In a low voice, ‘come now, Princess, this isn’t the time. Reverse your blunder is my advice. You have only a matter of hours if, indeed, you can mend this.’ Standing he turns abruptly towards the door and over his shoulder he says, ‘I’ll give you some time to think on it.’

When the door is closed he hears a muffled sob and the sound of a fist hitting a wall. He counts himself lucky that she hadn’t slapped him. She would have been within her rights, he must own. But being beastly comes with the job and he reasons that she has plenty of her own beastly moments of necessary cruelty within her past and, should she survive (unlikely), most certainly in her future.

 

Tarkin is on the bridge when Krennic storms off from the cell block to find him. He knows that this is perhaps rash, that he is running on little sleep and is mostly certain that the knot resting in the base of his stomach is an ulcer and his constant diet of caf, smokes, wine and digestiffs probably isn’t helping it. Oh well, he’s survived on worse. Onward and into the breach!

Standing at the main consul is Tarkin surrounded by Wilken and Ozzel. Krennic hides a sneer at the presence of two of his least favourite admirals. He wonders where Io has been shipped off too, since he hasn’t seen him in a week. Probably given a new command and shuffled along by Wilken who evidently doesn’t know a gifted officer when he’s smacked in the head with one.

Tarkin turns when he enters and looks entirely unsurprised at Krennic’s presence. Has he lost the capability of shocking people or has everyone gone and developed better poker faces? Well, he thinks, Tarkin’s has always been very good. It’s never not been around in the years that I’ve known him. Wilken’s expression is hostile. Ozzel’s bored.

‘I need to speak with the Grand Moff.’ He isn’t sure who he is addressing this to so says it to all of them equally. Tarkin remains decidedly uninterested. ‘In private.’

‘I’m busy, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Undoubtedly. Make an appointment with my secretary.’

Krennic frowns as the governor turns back to the screen. ‘Really, governor, I would think you to be more interested in the safety of this vessel than that.’

Wilken steps towards Krennic, ‘if there is anything you wish to say pertaining to the Death Star’s security you will consult with me.’

‘It’s a broader issue than just the Death Star, Admiral, and I think it concerns the Grand Moff more than you.’

‘It’s Director, now, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘I’ll remember that, Admiral. Now,’ he leans around Wilken’s bulk to find Tarkin’s eye. ‘It won’t take but a moment of your time, governor.’

Tarkin considers him. Krennic can see the icy wheels of the man’s mind turning. He admires the work Tarkin puts into each deliberation when it comes to military politiking. Too bad he’s so trigger-happy in all other circumstances. Once complete with his weighing of pros and cons Tarkin gives a small nod. ‘Very well,’ he sighs. ‘I will speak with you in the council chamber. You have five minutes.’

Spinning on his heel, cape swishing, Krennic marches off making sure that the glee he experienced upon seeing Wilken’s distraught face is not visible. He thinks that he will allow himself a bottle of wine during his next off-shift. In celebration of making the weasel squirm.

‘This had better be important,’ Tarkin snarls once they’re in the council chamber.

‘It is. You’re going to blow up Alderaan.’

‘Indeed. I’m glad you’ve caught up with the rest of us.’

‘I spoke with the princess. Wait,’ he holds up a hand. ‘Wait, before you lecture me about my rank and my role and how I’m supposed to listen to you, I want to make a case for holding off on complete planetary destruction.’

Tarkin folds his arms, nods his head in a clear indication of ‘you have my attention’.

‘Well, first is that this is our best leverage with the princess. Evidently the information she supplied me was wrong given our sudden decision to decamp to the Alderaan Quadrant but show enough force, but without playing our hand completely, and she will break. I saw it when she heard that her parents only had a matter of hours. Lay on the guilt about their death, or impending death as the case may be, and she will break. She’s moral enough for that to work.’

Tarkin nods, ‘Continue.’

‘All right. I would have thought that motivation enough to perhaps take out a minor city instead of the planet but all right.’

‘This had better not be about your wine.’

‘I calculated the price inflation and the destruction of Alderaan would actually benefit my collection. But no, it has nothing to do with the wineries. Although they would be a great loss to the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. But to continue, Alderaan is the only planet containing Synthstone, prime building materials, and rare planet-side minerals such as Terillium and Chismuth which we use in,’ he waves his tablet. ‘Almost all our electronic devices. Terillium itself is _vanishingly_ rare. On top of that there’s the Istabith rainforest which supplies us with various plant components to medicines and while those can be synthetically manufactured we’re still discovering new potential cures and remedies every year. Blowing up Alderaan would be like shooting ourselves in the foot while setting the room on fire.’

‘That is a strong statement.’

‘You see my point, though.’

‘I do.’

‘So you will stay the entire planet’s destruction? Perhaps take out a city or two? If you want test the full power of the battle station take out, I don’t know, Tatooine. No one cares about that planet.’

Tarkin shakes his head, ‘No, we are still going ahead with Alderaan. Although I agree with making the princess watch in the hopes of gaining more information. Ultimately, the fear that the destruction of Alderaan, the government of which readily aides and abets rebel movements, would instill in other potential secessionist systems outweighs the benefits of allowing it to remain in existence.’

‘I disagree-’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion and I do not require you to condone these actions.’

Krennic breaths out, wonders if his half-mad notion of kissing the bleeding governor would get him shot but _damn_ does he make him frustrated. He decides that at the very least it would potentially get him slapped and he’d really rather not have that happen.

Tuning back in he hears Tarkin say, ‘There are machinations in effect from a higher source of power than myself that you are unaware of. So, it is final. Alderaan is going as an example to the galaxy of what happens when you fly in the face of the empire.’

Krennic steps forward, still scowling, still reigning in indignation and feeling antsy and tipping on the edge of suicidal decisions, ‘Perhaps if you told me, even some of it, even in the vaguest of terms, I would be able to adjust my own actions and decisions accordingly. Working with only half the data leads to poor outcomes, governor, as I am sure you well know. Example: had I died on Scarif you wouldn’t have known about the weakness in the Death Star.’

‘Which, to date, you have not found.’

‘To date _we_ have not found. And I think we’re getting close. It’s scratching the back of my head. I’ll get it.’

They are standing far too close. Krennic finds everything maddening mostly due to a lack of sleep. Irrationality is a nuisance. Clear, straight lines, like an architect's design, is how things ought to run. Not this bombasticity.

‘Do so shortly, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘I won’t fail.’

‘So you keep promising but with lacklustre results.’

‘And you stepped in before I could adequately act and your results were, in the long run for the empire, as lacklustre as --’

‘Enough. I will not have this argument with you again.’

‘You are standing in the midst of my _lacklustre results_. And for lacklustre results you sure put a lot of effort into gaining control of them-’

‘ _Enough_.’

Krennic spins around, walks to the end of the room. A slow minute spends itself in silence before Krennic turns back to Tarkin. Between them is space and Krennic remembers that when you touch an object you exchange atoms with it, you become it and it becomes you which means when they fucked they became each other. A distressing notion.

‘Do you really think so little of me?’ Krennic asks.

‘That is not a relevant questions.’ Tarkin replies.

‘I think it entirely relevant.’

Tarkin shrugs, ‘you can think what you want. It isn’t, though.’

A slow nod. A slow motion of fine, fine, fine. Krennic walks to the door and Tarkin says, before he can open it, ‘if it’s any consolation, do you think I’d work this hard to gain and keep control of the Death Star if I truly thought it lacklustre?’

The door opens. Krennic steps through to the blinding light of the hallway.

 

The destruction of a planet is an unprecedented occurrence and all officers and staff line the windows facing Alderaan. The blue and green and white-topped mountains glisten up at them, reflecting the light of the star that allowed life to flourish on the planet. When it becomes dust the galaxy is silent. Feels silent, at least, save for the long, keening cry of a single person wishing that she, too, could be like her parents and return unto the stardust from whence all life came.

 

When the emperor calls Tarkin, a few hours later, to congratulate him on the successful obliteration of three million lives and the inevitable, fierce hunt that will now begin for the natural resources the empire once received so plentifully from the empty spot where Alderaan once rested the governor finds himself thinking about how space tastes.

Mostly metallic. Like gunpowder. Which is fitting because space is cruel and cold and unforgiving. Unbending in its relentless, slow expanse to inevitable death of all creatures, great and small, that reside within it. He had heard Krennic speak of the Heat-death of the universe and it seems an age ago that they had that conversation. Clothes still wearing the remnants of the smell of the destruction of Scarif. The Lieutenant-commander half mad on pain-killers and exhilaration of survival. His eyes had been blue-blue. Like Scarif sky. Like Alderaan seas.

To survive in space you must be as cold and cruel and unforgiving.

‘I think, my lord, that perhaps we ought to have considered the full ramifications of the loss of Alderaan.’ He doesn’t know where this is coming from. ‘I was thinking specifically the loss of the mining operations.’

‘We have mining operations elsewhere, Wilhuff.’

‘Yes, my lord, but there are certain minerals that were only to be found on Alderaan. Or, if they are elsewhere, they are rare and made more so by this event.’

The emperor waves him off, says that it is no matter. There is a plan for the empire and this is all steps within it. He would explain it all to Tarkin but he worries about spies and infiltrators. He pauses in the spiel, looks away from the feed for a long minutes, ‘I worry about suns, Wilhuff.’

‘Suns, my lord?’ He wonders if the man meant _sons_ for who inherits the empire when Sheev dies?

‘Suns. They have come to me lately, in my meditations and I think they might be important. I will ponder it further and relay plans when they are fully thought out. I congratulate you on the success of the Death Star. Ah, ah, before you ask, do not worry. I see it will be in your full command shortly. Patience.’

Later, that shift, and Tarkin worries over the problem of the long term maintenance of the empire as he continues watching video feed of officers. So far, other than finding about five affairs that really ought not to be happening, no one appears to be exhibiting clear signs of defection. But the empire. Long term the approach of ‘shoot now, ask questions later’ might harm more than help. He thinks without thinking that the emperor might be losing the plot. In which case he, as Grand Moff, would be regent but regent for who? There is no heir. There is a limited, non-functioning notion of succession. It is as if Palpatine does not think he will die.

Do Sith Lords die? Tarkin doesn’t know. He clears his mind, wary of the thoughts, and returns all due-diligence to mole hunting. When he sleeps during his off-shift he dreams of suns red and fiery and all consuming. They burn up in them. Him, Palpatine, Krennic, even the Princess. All burn. They become nothing but ashes in space.


	13. Chapter 13

Krennic wants to break it apart. That conversation with the Grand Moff but decides against it. In the MEP Bay he says, ‘I can’t dissect it.’ 

‘Dissect what, sir?’ Adkin is at his desk waiting for instructions. 

‘It won’t be prettier inside.’ 

‘What won’t, sir?’ 

‘You ever run into those armoured crickets on Lexrul, Lieutenant?’ 

She nods. Of course she has. They come out with the seasonal rains and wreak havoc for local poultry farms. 

‘Big, nasty things. Ugly on the outside but even uglier inside. They’re important.’ He points at her. ‘Remember that, Lieutenant.’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘Don’t dissect them.’ 

‘No, sir.’ 

He thinks, Did I just compare a conversation to an armoured flesh eating cricket? Maybe I need sleep. Most certainly. My sleep time was interrupted by planetary destruction. He shuffles the conversation and the no-longer-present Alderaan out of mind and makes a note to go through his possessions and hawk all Alderaan goods for the highest bidding price which, given their certain rarity, will be fantastically exorbitant. Nothing like utter destruction to improve the seller’s market. 

‘Were they common where you are from, Lieutenant?’ 

‘Yes, sir. Every year they’d come out and eat the baby chicks. And swallow’s eggs. Really anything. They weren’t picky. My sister and I would take shots at them with our father’s blaster.’ 

‘Pests. Speaking on pests, I hope Caruso hasn’t been disturbing your work. There’s an internal review happening.’ 

He can tell she doesn’t believe him and respects her for it. Healthy skepticism is a sign of a true Imperial survivor. Provided she doesn’t end up dead at the end of some general’s poor strategic decision or as a result of a nasty workplace accident she will go far. 

‘He hasn’t been any trouble, sir.’ 

‘Good. Good.’ He looks at her for a steady moment. ‘What is your opinion of him, Lieutenant?’ 

‘Caruso, sir? He is very dedicated to his job.’ 

‘Hardly an answer.’ 

‘He works very hard.’ 

He gives her a look. He thinks it’s like when Tarkin had to say something nice about Admiral Ozzel in the officer's mess many years ago and came up with ‘well he has children and they’re not dead yet’. His own requirement to say something not-insulting about Lyra had been similar, ‘she has a child. It’s doing well I hear’. The lowest denominator of kindness: you are able to keep another human alive for at least eighteen years. Lyra hadn’t really been able to do that so her capabilities of motherhood are worse than Ozzel’s abilities at fatherhood. 

Adkin sighs out a reply, ‘he is sneaky and I would trust him only as far as I can throw him which isn’t very far, sir.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘He’s up to something.’ Krennic raises an eyebrow and waits for her to extrapolate. ‘Well, sir, he asked about your locked drawer in your desk when everyone knows the only things in there are extra strength pain pills, a bottle of wine and energy drinks.’ 

‘How do you know that?’ 

‘I tested a scanner on it. Also biscuits. Sir, your blood levels-’

‘Are fantastic. Continue.’ He doesn’t say, My stomach lining on the other hand… 

‘He came to talk to Linden and I but then also went through your papers, or wanted to go through your papers. And he asked me to spy on you.’ 

‘Did you take him up on it?’ 

‘I was noncommittal.’ 

‘You should have. I’m very boring. I want you to do something for me.’ He considers her. How far does he trust Lieutenant Adkin? Further than some, not as far as others. She certainly has no bones to pick with him which is a decided improvement over his usual acquaintances. She has demonstrated a sound mind and something like loyalty. She didn't _have_ to tell him about Caruso's poking at papers and locked desk drawers. And she also didn't have to not call him on the bluff about the internal review. ‘I want you to follow him, when you can, and see who else he is trailing. What questions he is asking. I can make an educated guess but would like firm data.’ 

It is her turn to give him a look. He returns a carefully blank face and taps the plans for the armoury on the desk. ‘To business, Lieutenant.’ 

‘Yes, sir.’    
  


 

D-block shift and Krennic sneaks into Tarkin’s room and tosses the information stick over to him.

‘We’ve done the plans. You wanted to see Erso’s communications as well.’ 

Wordlessly Tarkin takes the stick and moves to his desk to plug it in and pull them up. The file size alone is massive as it includes all attachments and images. The first one, being the most recent Erso sent, is the cat picture. Tarkin stares at it. Krennic stares at it. Neither says anything. Tarkin presses, ‘next’. 

Ten messages later Tarkin says, ‘his cat?’ 

‘No. He hated cats.’

‘You don’t, though.’ 

‘I don’t care either way. He just thought it was funny.’ 

‘And you didn’t.’ 

‘I did. At the time.’ 

‘Never—’

‘Send you a cat with a Eriadu flag bandana? Noted.’ Krennic thinks, You didn’t say anything about marsupials with flag bandanas. But considering his desire to remain with a post and a rank higher than that of Ensign he decides that perhaps ridiculous pictures from the holo-net can be given a pass. Not quite Tarkin’s style. 

Forty messages in and they decide to split the content in half. Tarkin working top down and Krennic bottom up. Some chains are more difficult to parse than others. Going far enough back in time to include their early thoughts on kybar crystal’s hypothetical uses. There were pictures of sketches and loose equations and scribbled notes on napkins one of them in Krennic’s much younger hand with the words ‘carbon density’ fiercely underlined. 

He remembers Galen once saying that people change and isn’t it possible for Krennic to see that? To respect that? To see  _ him _ , Galen Erso, as he is now and not as he was when they first began this project. But Krennic couldn’t say: The only you I see is the one from the program. That is how you are in my mind. I tried to see you now, a father and a husband and a man with suddenly pressing morals that I cannot understand. But beneath that you’re still a scientist. 

‘Esma once said that if you want to know a man you have to see what we wears beneath his clothes.’ 

Tarkin makes an interested noise. Krennic thinks that even though he has seen glimpses of what is beneath the governor’s uniform it is most likely scales. Cold reptilian flesh. The sound of a snake’s belly on hot sand. Beneath Galen’s posturing there was always a scientist’s coat. There is always the smell of formaldehyde and bleach and vinegar. The cool removal of the lab. Beneath Krennic’s uniform? He isn’t sure. He thinks a glass of wine would be helpful. 

‘What would your friend say about Galen Erso’s hidden layers?’ 

‘She would say that he always was what and who he always had been. People like to think they change in deeply fundamental ways but usually there is a strain of the same that clings beneath the alterations. Foundations, she would call them.’ 

‘An interestingly bleak take on humanity.’ 

‘I thought you’d like it.’ 

Tarkin nods. He asks who Esma is and how Krennic knows her. She seems remarkably sensible to be an acquaintance of Krennic’s. 

‘She’s my mother. I’m stealing some of your wine.’ 

‘I don’t remember offering you any.’ 

‘You didn’t.’ He walks to the cupboard and finds an open red and pours himself a glass. He contemplates politeness and manners. Overrated. ‘Do you want some?’ 

‘Very well.’ 

Krennic returns to the desk and deposits a glass in front of Tarkin who sniffs it with evident distaste. Krennic ignores him and pulls up the last message he had been reading. 

Galen had once said, a week before he and Lyra had disappeared themselves all those years ago, ‘it is hard to be someone you don’t want to be.’

At the time he hadn’t understood what Galen was saying. And on a truly personal level, looking within himself, he still doesn’t understand. Why would you be something you don’t want to be? What purpose does that serve? But looking back now, at Galen and what he was about to do, he sees it as perhaps a warning, perhaps a farewell, perhaps an attempt at an explanation. Or, maybe, it was nothing at all. 

When he was a young man and studying architectural theory and the historiography of ancient practices he would have looked for meaning and import in those words. 

Now, he thinks sometimes people just say shit because they think it sounds good. 

‘I really hate people sometimes,’ he says. Tarkin rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t give me that. I know you do too.’ 

‘Did Erso vet everything by you? All alterations?’ 

‘Most.’ 

Tarkin pulls up the number of messages on the stick. He pushes it back down and breaths out very slowly. Krennic doesn’t say, I told you’d this would be terrible. I told you to let me do it. Tarkin dumps the message he is reading into a folder for closer analysis later. Krennic wonders what patterns he is looking for. What behaviour he is hoping to find buried in fleeting lines of ‘altered shaft 1.a67. Too constrictive. Beam pitch and yaw problems’. 

They work for an hour before Tarkin says, ‘the other day. After Alderaan’s destruction.’ 

‘I have decided to not dissect anything you ever say.’ 

Unexpected. Krennic is pleased with Tarkin’s apparent shock at this statement. ‘Very well, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

‘It’s like a cricket. Doesn’t get any prettier on the inside.’ 

Tarkin doesn’t dignify this with a response. Krennic is slightly wounded until he recalls that the Grand Moff doesn’t have the background information. He explains Lexrulian Armoured Crickets. Tarkin says that he never liked locusts, other than as excellent sources of protein, and this continues to confirm his bias against them. 

Another while passes and Krennic is bored and fidgety and Tarkin is bored and very still and they are no further along in ascertaining Erso’s well hidden sabotage. 

Krennic says, ‘Speaking of our previous conversation, do you want to fuck?’ 

Tarkin thinks about it for a minute then nods. Yes, that’s fine. They can do that instead. Erso’s multitudinous messages will keep. 

When he leaves it’s half an hour later. They readjust clothes and Krennic smooths down his tunic and cloak as Tarkin pulls up the feed for the hallway. 

‘All right, it’s clear.’ Krennic goes to leave and Tarkin shoves the information key into his tunic pocket. ‘I have a copy. There are enough where most spare time ought to be used to focus on this. Go.’ 

  
  
  


By the ever-present light of the Alderaan quadrant sun Wilken adjusts a second plant on his desk. This one is an Alderaan slipper orchid and now one of the last of its kind. He admires the beautiful yellow petals and their delicate shape. It’s almost peculiarly sensual, the glistening folds, the round pouch, the gentle hanging leaves. He adores it. The yellow fades along the folds of the petals to orange then deep red. It reminds him of stars. 

‘Sir?’ Caruso is at the door holding a video feed disc. ‘I have something for you.’ He brims with excitement. Wilken believes it is a little excessive.

‘Oh? Something on Lieutenant-commander Krennic?’

‘Indeed, sir. Here, may I?’ Caruso waits for Wilken to gesture a ‘go ahead’ and puts in the video disc and it pulls up the feed for the cell block D. Wilken sees the time stamp as being shortly before Alderaan’s destruction. When he and the other admirals, including the Grand Moff, had all been on the bridge. Down the hallway walks Krennic who, once again, goes into the princess’ cell. 

‘What about this?’ 

‘Well, sir, he did protest Alderaan’s destruction did he not?’ 

‘He said he had information pertaining to the security of the Death Star which Tarkin later indicated was related to the Alderaan explosion, yes.’ 

‘I just wonder, sir, at his being so invested in the planet’s fate.’ 

Wilken rewinds and watches Krennic go into the princess’ cell. A few minutes later he re-emerges. He does not sign the timesheet, he only nods to the guard and leaves. Other than the video there is no official record of Krennic’s activity in that block. Yes, he thinks, that is  _ very  _ suspicious. He smiles at Caruso, ‘good work. This is excellent. If you find anything further bring it to me. I think the Grand Moff will be very interested in this.’ 

Caruso walks out leaving Wilken watching the play-back loop of the seven minutes. He wonders what the best course of action would be. Should he take this to Tarkin immediately or wait until he has a better case? He suspects it won’t take much since the Grand Moff and the Lieutenant-commander are well known antagonists. Going so far as to leave passive aggressive notes to each other on reply-all message chains. Snatching up the disk he buzzes Tarkin. Does he have a moment to spare? It’s important.

  
  


Tarkin thinks that he needs to explain to Krennic that he is not invisible to security cameras and also thinks that he needs to do some cleaning up of the ones near his suite. How the Lieutenant-commander can still tromp around as if he is in charge — the mind, it boggles. 

‘Thank you, Admiral.’ Tarkin says when the video feed is finished. ‘Very informative.’ 

‘It is suspicious, is it not, that he goes to her and then, from what I am given to understand, advocates quite strongly for the protection of Alderaan.’ 

‘His arguments were justifiable. As an architect I believe his concern for the allocation of natural resources and building materials to be entirely natural.’ 

‘He was worried about natural resources.’ 

‘Mining operations, Admiral.’ 

‘Why visit the princess, then? He has no security clearance. He left no paper-trail which speaks of dubious intent. And this is not the first time.’ 

‘I am aware of your arguments.’ Buzzing his secretary Tarkin requests the initial video feed from the first visit Krennic made to the princess. His secretary replies that apparently the feed is missing. Completely deleted, even from the back files. ‘What do you mean completely deleted?’ 

‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s gone. There is an hour missing and it is A-Shift from the arrival of Admiral Wilken to interview her to the A-Shift guard change. Within that window she was seen by the Admiral and the Lieutenant-commander.’ 

Tarkin sits back, taps the arm of his chair. This is suspicious and he dislikes coincidences. They rankle. The feed is projected, dividing the space between Tarkin and Wilken. Krennic walks down the hall, stops to say something to the guard then goes into the cell. Five minutes later he emerges out. 

‘What do we have on the cell feed?’ 

His secretary pulls it up from the archives and the three see Krennic gesticulating. He remains by the door except at one point when he crosses the cell and leans into Organa’s face. The entire interaction in clearly antagonistic. There is no camaraderie, no frantic exchanges of compatriots. Her body language is tense, unyielding. His, languid then angry then languid. 

‘And the cell feed from the other time?’ 

‘That is also missing, sir.’ 

Tarkin wonders who is playing cheeky buggers with the security system. He suspects that it isn’t Krennic but the man is clever enough to arrange something to make it look like he isn’t involved. But to what purpose? The rebels want to destroy his precious life’s work and in Tarkin’s understanding of the rather frantic man Krennic values only one thing about his life and power climb and that is the immortality granted by the existence of his buildings. Aiding in the destruction of one is entirely out of character. 

He does not discount the possibility, though. But, he thinks, I believe there is something else going on. 

‘Why was I not notified that we had patches in the surveillance of our prisoner?’ 

Wilken shakes his head, he looks shocked and Tarkin believes it to be genuine. 

‘I don’t know, governor. But I will have it investigated immediately.’ 

‘Do so, Admiral.’ The loop replays Krennic walking down the hall. The cell door opening. Him entering. Then exiting five minutes later. They watch in silence. ‘I need not remind you that the emperor will brook no failure at this juncture.’ 

‘Indeed you need not.’   
  
Tarkin hits replay as Wilken shows himself out of the office. The emperor had warned of a mole in their midst. Had felt it through the force. Tarkin buzzes his secretary, ‘bring me all the surveillance footage of cell block-D. I want to see exactly how much is missing. And get head of IT and Security on the line. I want to know what is happening on my battle station.’ 


	14. Chapter 14

Krennic enjoys going back to the first steps of his art when he designs. So revamping parts of the armoury above the MEP Bay brings him to his old books rife with theory and philosophy and the old, ephemeral questions of creation.

It does not apply, necessarily, to military architectural engineering but the question of artistic beauty hangs at the back of his mind. It is one that he remembers debating with colleagues years ago before the Weapons Program grabbed him and they went their own way to crafting opera houses and light filled, sun filled galleries and he never-waning moons that murder planets.

A friend of his, Garthoh, stood by that the truly beautiful line is not straight, as traditional architectural philosophies would have it, but a snake. A curved line, the spine of a human now the spine of a building. Curving and imperfect. Serpentine. Follow the line of a snake, of a mountain, of a leaf fallen from a tree and see the sloping line of beauty.

He does not agree. He does not disagree. He is the perpetual advocate of ‘each to his own, in his own time, in his own way’ which is to say: What is beautiful for an opera house on Coruscant is not beautiful for an opera house on Lexrul or Eriadu or anywhere else in the massive, forever expanding galaxy.

Galen had once said, ‘one day you will need to take a firm position on this matter, Orson. Inability to land on a firm point will kill a man.’

Krennic had replied, ‘that’s just your pretence at idealism speaking. The truest way to lasting long and making a name is being as malleable and shifting as the wind.’ He blew out smoke. They were on a balcony with hand-rolled and overlooking partially reconstructed Coruscant city. The smoke had twisted around itself. Drifted upwards over serpentine skyline. His lungs had felt like ash.

But where is Galen now? He is dead.

Krennic has always liked snakes. There are so many on Lexrul you must get used to them and learn to not be afraid when you see them. He sees one now and he is relearning how to handle them. You pinch a snake behind its head so it cannot bite you. Nial had taught him that as soon as he had taught him how to walk.

When Tarkin fucks him and looks down at him there is Scarif eyes but also they are snake eyes. That pale blue is the milky blue of a drake’s expression. He always felt more at home with the cold blooded creatures that warmed themselves on rocks and basked in the sun than with those warm blooded mammals that were driven insane by the heat and jumped off cliffs to their death in cold water below.

The other thing Krennic knows is that sometimes, when it get above a certain temperature internally, a snake can accidentally cook itself. It does not mean to. It is only trying to survive. Lyra had been like that, he thinks. A snake warming itself to try and bring back sunlight to her burrow for her eggs.

But where is Lyra now? She is dead.

He balances along the straight line of linear beauty.

He and Tarkin are in a spare council room and Tarkin has fingers inside of him and is fucking him with a fervour he has not felt before. Although he will own they haven’t shagged that often, this being only the third time.

It is like walking along the edge of a crystal. The edge of a sand dune. You fall over and you will never make it back to your initial starting point. The sand will slip beneath you, the crystal slides from firm grasp.

He feels like he is drowning on a very still lake. He wants to grab Tarkin and pin him to the ground and hump against his thigh but doesn’t think that to be feasible at the moment.

When they kiss it is bites. They are like snakes wrapped around each other being baked alive in desert sun.

  
  


Caruso on the same deck level as the MEP Bay has Adkin on edge. She has been watching him since the early hours of her shift which has lowered productivity but has made her last four hours decidedly more interesting.

Linden taps her shoulder, ‘what are you doing?’

She mutters something under her breath. She tries to see where Caruso has gone but he ducked around a corner.

‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ she says.

‘You just went an hour ago. Caf is running through you faster than piss out of a wookie.’

‘That is the worst analogy I have ever had applied to me, Linden. Please never do that again.’

He grins and flicks a rubber-band in her direction.

‘I’m on my period,’ she says scooting away.

‘You were on your period yesterday, too.’

‘These things last more than one day, you know. I’ll be right back.’

He is very confused by this and she leaves him to work out the logistics. Caruso is still in the hall. Luck! She slows down and kneels to adjust her boot lace. He stands a little ways down the hall at a communications center and is focused on his work. If he noticed her he has not let it concern him. She wonders how many times she can tie and retie a lace. Maybe she should pretend to have gotten a rock in her boot which would require more effort than tying things up. But no, she thinks, that will attract too much attention. She quickly takes out her tablet and dislodges the battery, the battery holding case, the memory card and its back up and begins to fiddle with them.

She sees Caruso’s boots in her line of site. They are perfectly polished. They glisten. Her face is distorted in its reflection back to her.

‘Lieutenant?’ Caruso intones down to her. She looks up with an embarrassed smile.

‘My tablet. Been super buggy lately. I’ve gotten to the point of just taking it apart.’

‘In the middle of the hallway?’

‘I’ve had to restart it seven times since my shift started. That I haven’t murdered it yet is a blessing.’

‘Try a new battery, sometimes the salt leaks out and they become corroded but you can’t see it due to the casing.’

She nods and mutters her thanks. Watches from the corner of her eye as he walks off. She waits a for half a minute, scoops up her tablet and deposits the loose bits in her pocket as she goes over to the wall consul. Taking out her spare memory drive she pushes it in, requests encryption, and proceeds to download the information Carusso had just sent through the device. Most likely it would be reports and updates to Imperial headquarters but doing it through a wall consul all the way down in the MEP Bay is decidedly odd. Why not do it in his office? That would make more sense.

The com beeps at her and she removes the chip and returns to the MEP. Linden notes that she took a while and what? Broke her tablet in the bathroom?

‘It’s been a rough day,’ she says. The spare memory drive is hidden behind the battery pack as she pieces her tablet back together. ‘I only hope Krennic doesn’t show up in a proper mood.'

‘He’s been better lately. Not as twitchy.’

‘Super spaced out though. He talked to me for twenty minutes about crickets.’

‘Absolute madman.’

Adkin nods her agreement and wonders if she should tell Linden. The man might not be the brightest star in the galaxy but he is reliable and she considers him a friend. Her pocket feels like it’s on fire with the tablet resting against her leg. She picks at a sleeve, the dark linen fraying against dark skin. She taps the table. Linden looks up with a raised eyebrow.

‘What?’ He asks.

She sucks in a breath. Whispers, ‘can you keep a secret?’

He slowly nods. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘It has great potential to be either nothing or something very big.’

He glances over her shoulder and scoots closer, ‘Caruso?’

She nods.

‘I wondered what he was up to around here. Snooping.’

‘Big time.’

‘Our madman boss under review?’

‘Something like that.’

He says that this isn’t too much a shock, considering. But also, as much as Krennic annoys him, Tarkin, Caruso and Wilken bug him more. They're spookier. He knows where he stands with Krennic but not with the Triumvirate of Control. So what’s up?

‘Caruso is investigating Krennic. The Lieutenant-commander asked me to follow him so I did this shift and might have downloaded highly classified information.’

Linden licks his lips. Adkin glances around then grabs his shoulder and pulls him closer. She hisses, ‘you are either all or nothing with what I tell you. You can’t hold your water don’t get involved.’

‘I can hold it.’

‘Good. If I think you snitched I’ll have your guts for garters.’

He nods. She can’t tell if he believes her or not, or even if she believes her own threats, but it doesn’t matter at this point. She will come to that bridge and cross it in due course.

She takes out her tablet, pops open the back and removes the memory card and they pick the lock on Krennic’s desk to take out the off-licence tablet he thinks they don’t know about. Or maybe he knows they know. Also irrelevant at this juncture.

Adkin turns it on and inserts the chip. A mass of encrypted information displays before them. She undoes her own encryption so only Caruso’s remains.

Linden slides through a few files, ‘I’m not sure how we’re going to unlock these. They’re probably just basic updates and logistical reports.’

‘Why send them from a com in the MEP Bay then?’

‘Because he forgot about it until then? Maybe he was supposed to send them sooner, forgot, and didn’t want the embarrassment of doing it back in his office where Wilken could see.’

They fidget with the files. A flurry of movement at the end of the MEP Bay sends them scuttling to shove the tablet back in the drawer and relock it and act as if nothing had happened. Krennic rounds the corner, eyes them both with great suspicion then goes to his desk.

Adkin turns over a file. It sounds very loud in the bay. Krennic gets up and pours himself a caf. Linden taps his fingers on the table. It also sounds very loud. Krennic mutters to himself as he rearranges papers on his desk and then flops into his chair, pulls up his tablet and begins monologuing about his views of the irrepressible Social Committee.

Linden whispers, ‘I thought he asked you to do this snooping.’

‘ _He did_. He just didn’t ask me to break into his secret desk drawer.’

‘We all know what’s in it from that scanner test last week.’

‘Are you going to tell him we just broke in to it? Because I’m not.’

Linden returns to his work. Both put on a brave face of assumed innocence for the remainder of their shift. Leaving Adkin tells Linden to come to her room in an hour, they can take a look a the information there. He shakes his head. Says he didn’t ask to be put into a ridiculous holo-novella but here we all are.

  


Feeling bored and on edge Krennic goes to the Death Star bar to have a drink and try and get his hands on a hard-copy of the latest planet-side papers. Preferably ones with a good crossword. Finding one with only a few of the answers filled in, in handwriting suspiciously like that of General Veers’ (and how it even got to the bar from where he is stationed is a mystery), Krennic takes himself off to his favourite corner with a glass of wine.

He is part-way through and contemplating the heavy animal-based analogies his mind has been drawn to when he recalls that he is due for planetside leave. Perhaps that is what his mind has been trying to tell him for the past few days. That he needs a break, some rest and relaxation, to see sunlight and have a normal circadian rhythm for at least three days straight. He pulls up his calendar and looks at the maintenance schedule, which he should oversee since they are still training new staff on that since they lost a chunk down on Scarif, and then the armoury touch-ups begin. Which he most certainly needs to be on board for. And also, the time is so tense with Caruso and the leaks and the sabotage that he really shouldn’t be away until that is more firmly settled. At least to his satisfaction.

He flips along. So maybe in six months?

He pencils in a tentative three day weekend.

When had his work life gotten to this point? He used to have free time. He blames it entirely on the rebel scum, Wilken’s paranoia and Erso’s betrayal. Everything had been going swimmingly until then.

He shifts his weight. Also wonders when this thing with Tarkin had gotten to the point that it currently is at which is a point he feels very uncertain about. That, too, needs to be sorted. He isn’t sure in what direction or manner it needs to be sorted, but sorting needs to happen. Mostly because they shouldn’t be fucking mid-shift in an unused council room. How positively juvenile. It’s entirely Tarkin’s Eriadu heritage, he is convinced. They’re both from the Outer Rim but there’s a savagery to Eriadu that Lexrul lacks. Yes, everything on Lexrul is trying to kill you most of the time, including the people, but there’s a civility to it. An order. A sense of egalitarian free-for-all of survival.

He can’t remember the last time he did something like this.

He then remembers he hadn’t, really. Or he had but then the person he had been sleeping with went off and got shot and the others he had slept with also hadn’t fared well. Civil war breeds low life expectancy. He ponders the Tarkin question, the Cricket Conversation, the Conversation About the Cricket Conversation.

Too confusing. He decides to go back to doing what he had been doing before, which is just rolling with it and seeing how it turns out and hopefully using whatever newfound thing-ness Tarkin may or may not have (most likely not-have) about him to his advantage. He cannot help but think that in the end the benefits from the arrangement outweigh the detractions.

On his way back to his rooms he uses the public washroom and leans back so head rests against the cool tile wall. Someone comes in and uses a urinal. They don’t wash their hands before they leave which Krennic assumes to mean they thought they were alone.

He must focus. There is still much work to do and all of Erso’s communications to go through which is a harrowing task in a way he had not expected it to be. He returns to that thought: when a friend decides to no longer be your friend, what prompts it? What prompts their inability to care for you anymore?

There is no one he can take such a question to. Esma and Nial would never understand. He tries to think of a potential confident and comes up blank. He has never needed one before. The ceiling is already stained light yellow from surreptitious smokes and someone, he sniffs, smoking something other than tobacco. He smiles at the ceiling. It had been white, once. Everything fades so quickly.

The first lesson of an architect: nothing ever lasts forever. Paint least of all. Your building should look as beautiful in decay as it does in its glory. But a building is constantly sliding from one to the other. Stasis does not exist. Decay is permanent. Glory is not.

And the Death Star is in its glory and so has already started its decay. He hates thinking about that. It drags at his mind and makes him restless.

I hope, he thinks, that I won’t live to see its decline. I hope I get shot with it first. At least then I’ll go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe Tarkin can do it. Actually hit me this time. Better him than Wilken that filthy plant fucker.

Smiling he takes a pen from his pocket and writes ‘Wilken is a filthy plant fucker’ on the stall door alongside the other dribs and drabs of graffiti. Someone has written a naughty poem about a woman they slept with two quadrants over. Another has drawn a caricature of him looking very unattractive. Someone wrote, Grand Moff Has No Balls. Which Krennic knows with unerring accuracy to be distinctly untrue. Another one still wrote some rude jingle about their ex-lover. Many just drew faces or non-sense scenes. Much is incomprehensibly as it is painted over once a quarter.

Taking himself back to his room he once again thinks: Oh for pity’s sake Caruso could you be more obvious? Undresses, cleans up in the Fresher and passes out to the latest ridiculous holo-net show.

  


There are some buildings you look at, others you read. There are buildings you can only read as they relate to others. You must see all the architect’s work in a series to understand the message, the story being told. Krennic is not a serialist creator the way some other colleagues are. But he appreciates a complicated metaphor enacted with exacting grace. Certain buildings in Coruscant are intricate and complicated. Some are already being taught at the Future’s Programme. How strange to be at this stage when your own work is being taught. He sometimes feels as if he has just stepped off the podium after graduation.

The Death Star can be read on its own and will never need another to read against it. In contrast to it, in conjunction with it. It will stand on its own. Immortal until it isn’t anymore.


	15. Chapter 15

Caruso goes to Wilken, ‘I have something. Krennic was hiding schematics in his room.’ 

Wilken frowns, ‘he is the architect, Lieutenant. That seems natural.’  

‘It’s not the updated ones - it’s the set the rebels have. And also, all of Galen Erso’s correspondence.’ 

‘This also seems expected. He pulled it before Scarif.’ 

Caruso shakes his head. No, no he tries to explain. This is suspicious. Having this coupled with the visits to the princess on top of the chaos of Scarif and having a mole in the weapon’s program to begin with. This is all too suspicious. 

‘Well,’ Wilken says. ‘When you put it like that. Very well, bring him in. My office but make sure Tarkin is aware. The man is surprisingly territorial over power plays on a battle station that isn’t his.’    
  


 

When things come to head they often happen all at once. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold when we cannot hear each other. It happens in thusly:

 

Krennic is in the middle of his second caf and dictating to Adkin and Linden what the droids need to be doing to reinforce the armoury’s outer shell. And really this needs to be done across the entirety of the Death Star. 

‘Why?’ Linden asks. ‘I thought we were fully operational.’ 

‘We are. It’s just a secondary safety measure in case.’ 

‘In case of what, sir?’ 

Krennic thinks: in case this is where the weak spot is. I will redo every security measure on this station piece by piece if I must. 

‘In case of Rebel attack of course. When this was initially designed their capabilities to inflict mass destruction were more limited. Recent events have shown us that they are not to be underestimated. So we must stay ahead. That is a good lesson, Lieutenants.’ 

Linden makes a dutiful note. Caruso walks in. Linden looks up at him and the colour of his face changes. Krennic sees this alteration, looks behind him at Caruso. The Director’s secretary stands in a shaft of light that comes down from the windows above them. It makes him difficult to look at. He is flanked by storm troopers. He begins speaking. Krennic does not understand what he is saying. He wonders at his sudden inability to speak Basic. Everyone in the Bay is watching. 

Adkin, looking between Krennic and Caruso and the interested workers, thinks she should say something. Or Linden should say something. Or  _ someone _ should say something. He’s a work-aholic, she thinks. He’ll have an ablibi. Do alibi’s withstand accusations of treason? She doesn’t know. She looks to Linden who shrugs. She envisions the Admiralty and feels very small. 

  
  


With far too many windows up Tarkin skims through a spreadsheet of the missing footage. There is no pattern he can discern although the ever present cynic within him thinks that the pattern  _ is  _ that there is no pattern. 

People are habitual creatures and do things in cycles, even if they are unaware of it. Trying not to is a sign of dubious activity. The Death Star’s head of security, Yetsa, sits with him. They order a second cup of caf. They are trying to find elevator footage to indicate who, at the very least, went to the vicinity of the D-Block but cannot find any. 

Yetsa sits back, slurps his caf, Tarkin scowls at the noise. The head of security points, ‘the entire screening aparatus for that area was blocked and done so from within. Whoever did this, it was one of our own.’ 

‘The question is why. Have your people looked into possible compromised systems?’

‘They are doing so as we speak but so far there is nothing.’ 

‘So are they hampering from within or sending data out?’ 

Yetsa nods, ‘sending out is my bet. Which means it’s someone with high security clearance. If you’re high ranking enough you can send encrypted information out from certain consul stations.’ 

‘Which ones?’ 

The schematics are pulled up and the select consuls highlighted. ‘You need level seven clearance and the people who have that are myself, you, Admiral Wilken, and members of the council.’ 

Tarkin stares at the red highlights which are distributed evenly across the Death Star. It makes sense to have stations that a person can quickly access to send out classified data in case of emergency or attack. Most stations have such a set up and while it’s not a requirement it’s an assumed expectation for all battlestations. 

‘We’re missing something,’ Tarkin sits back in his chair. ‘And I have an ugly feeling that it’s glaringly obvious.’ 

‘Rebels have the plans, right? Their mole could be sending them updated information about the station from within. What has been reinforced, what hasn’t.’ 

‘Yes, yes quite likely it is something along those lines. The question still remains who it is. How easy is it to bypass the security requirement?’ 

‘Not easy at all. When we had the system set up it was completed by the emperor’s top security advisors so it’s sturdy.’ 

‘Retina scan, finger print, two pass codes?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘All right, I want your secret files on everyone with level seven clearance.’ 

Yetsa’s face becomes quite still. ‘What secret files?’ 

Tarkin sneers, ‘you’re a spy, first and foremost Yetsa. I know how your kind work. You have the official files and the unofficial. I want the unofficial.’ 

‘Do you know how may F.U.I's Ozzel has had covered up?’ 

‘Too many I imagine.’ 

Pulling out his tablet Yetsa plows through his files, goingb througbh more layers of security than Tarkin thinks strictly necessary. But then, perhaps the rather paranoid man is on top something since evidently the Death Star’s system isn’t enough. 

‘All right, I transferred them all.’ 

‘ _ All _ of them?  _ Everything _ you have.’ 

A look of complaint as Yetsa goes back and adds more files to the transfer. 

As the files load Tarkin’s secretary buzzes in, ‘the emperor on the line for you.’ Tarkin accepts the call. 

‘My lord.’ He motions Yetsa away and the head of security decamps to the front office to be given withering looks by Tarkin’s secretary. 

‘Wilhuff I have news you are to relate to the council immediately.’ 

Tarkin thinks, This isn’t really a good time. Then un-thinks it. The air gathers a density it did not have before which Tarkin assumes to be to the emperor probing the force. He isn’t sure how efficient keeping a clear mind is around Palpatine but thus far he has yet to get into trouble for his more unkind thoughts. 

The emperor begins to explain his lack of faith in the Senate and how he feels betrayed by their constant desire to spread power evenly between different branches of the Galactic government. After Alderaan there was a bit of an upheaval and now, the emperor sighs, he feels he must strip them of their full powers and jurisdiction. 

‘I’ll forward you the details.’ 

From the front office Tarkin hears Yetsa exclaim, ‘Oh shit’. 

‘Thank you, my lord.’ The emperor waves and the line closes. Tarkin goes to the door, ‘excuse me, I must see Admiral Wilken. A development has just occurred.’ 

Yetsa, looking at his tablet, ‘I’ll say. Krennic was just arrested for attempted treason and espionage.’ Scowling he says, ‘I wasn’t even aware there was an inquiry. I’m going to find Wilken and give him about ten pieces of my goddamn mind. Who was in charge of this? Who did the investigation? This is disgusting.’ 

Ignoring the outbursts Tarkin gathers his tablet and tells his secretary to clear his schedule until further notice. 

‘There has been a lot happening,’ Tarkin says as he and Yetsa make their way to Wilken’s office.

‘Things I ought to have been made aware of. Who headed the investigation?’ 

‘Lieutenant Caruso, Wilken’s secretary.’ 

‘Idiot. I’ve had to work with him. Man couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag.’ 

  
  
  


The MEP Bay, without Krennic, is softer, quieter. Adkin takes out the memory card and waves it under Linden’s nose. 

‘We have to finish decoding this right now. I think we only half half the encryption left to solve.’ 

‘How do we know it’s relevant?’ Linden asks. He is fidgeting in his chair and moving rulers around. 

Adkin, giving him a rude gesture, snips, ‘we  _ don’t _ . But it is damn suspicious and besides our boss is too bleeding self centered to want to help the rebellion.’ She hauls him up and drags him towards the door. ‘Come on, we don’t exactly have time.’   
  


 

Wilken’s office, once filled with Tarkin, Yetsa who is beyond angry at being left out of the loop on such a high-level security matter, Krennic who is ready to froth at the mouth, Caruso and two guards. 

Krennic wrenches his arm from their grip, ‘I’m not some degenerate who needs to be handled thusly.’ He catches sight of the Alderaan slipper orchid. Sneers at Wilken. ‘What am I being charged with?’ 

Wilken shuffles papers on his desk and wants to make Krennic wait it out. Wants to make him sweat and to show the Grand Moff that he can, indeed, run this Battle station without a supervisor. 

Tarkin says, ‘out with it, Admiral. Some of us are busy.’

Yetsa snarls, ‘I should have been notified. There is a proper protocol to follow when arresting an officer-'

‘Treason,’ Wilken snaps. He points at Krennic, ‘you are being arrested on suspicion of treason against the Empire.’ Krennic does not react the way he expected him to. Instead of snapping and snarling and getting into a lather at unjust charges he merely goes very still. It is the stillest Wilken has ever seen the man. Licking lips he continues, ‘We have certain proof of your potential involvement with the Rebels and you will be held until further notice so as to maintain the security of-’

‘What proof?’ Krennic asks. ‘What proof? Show me. What is it that I have done that makes you think me a traitor?’ 

Wilken only smiles. Krennic glares at him then looks over to the others in the room. Tarkin he seems to linger on the longest before searching out other faces. The nature of a condemned man to seek out his accusers. 

‘I won’t go anywhere until I have proof of my supposed wrong-doings. You speak of evidence but I have yet to see any.’ 

Wilken spreads his hands, ‘that is not how this works, Lieutenant-commander. You do not get to demand anything from anyone. I am doing you a courtesy by informing you in this manner.’ 

‘Courtesy,’ Krennic spits. ‘More like a display of ill-earned power.’ 

With a wave the two guards move to take Krennic in hand again and Wilken says, ‘put him next to his friend the princess. I’m sure they have much to talk about. He will be held until we can deliver him to the Senate.’ 

 

It is with some distinct satisfaction that Wilken watches Krennic be dragged from the room. Now comes out the angry dog who snarls that Wilken will be sorry and that this isn’t the end and something else about getting revenge that he didn’t catch entirely because the door slid shut, then. 

Once Krennic is removed the already uncomfortable feeling in the room grows. Wilken cares not for Tarkin’s now-evident disapproval. Caruso is just a secretary so his approval or non-approval is irrelevant. Yetsa is also irrelevant. Good at what he does but politically impotent. Wilken smiles again. It could not have gone more smoothly. 

Tarkin, ‘I’ve called a council meeting in half an hour.’ He is saying this as he leaves the office. ‘It’s of the utmost importance you attend, Director. I’ve had word from the emperor.’ 

‘Then you can tell me now.’ 

‘No, I rather think not.’ 

‘As Director of the Death Star-’

‘Later, Admiral.’ Tarkin leaves with Yetsa following behind. The too-full room feels empty. Bereft of victory. Wilken scowls at the spot where Tarkin had stood. 

‘He still imagines himself to be relevant.’ 

Caruso shrugs. ‘It’s his prerogative to hold on to whatever power he has, sir.’

‘Indeed. Makes it all the more pitiable. I will work on the final drafts of reports on Krennic before this meeting Tarkin has deemed so urgent.’ 

The slipper Orchid maintains its bloom even without sunlight. This is a marvel to Wilken and once Caruso has left to the front office his tenderly touches a petal. Amazing how something so delicate can be so sturdy. 

  
  
  


What is of such urgency that all council members need to meet at such an odd hour and in such semi-secrecy? The request had been sent through personal message systems and not secretaries and council members were understandably concerned. 

‘There has been talk of rebel incursion,’ Io says as soon as everyone is gathered. Tarkin wishes that people would mind their own business until told that something  _ is  _ their business to mind. He waves off the concern. 

‘A matter that is going to be wrapped up soon, I assure you.’ He wonders how much further he needs to push Wilken before the man has a fit of apoplexy. The Admiral in question quietly fumes at the other end of the table. ‘Thank you all for meeting at such short notice. I received a call from the emperor and the developments he is about to implement affect us all. First, he is reducing the power of the Senate due to recent security threats posed by the Rebellion. The governing body, he feels, will move too slow when what is required in such times is speed.’ 

Ozzel leans forward, ‘how will this change governing structures? The bureaucracy?’ 

‘Regional governors now hold rule of law in corresponding quadrants. This is an emergency measure to be held until the emperor feels that the Galactic Empire is no longer threatened.’ 

‘But Scarif is under control, we dealt the Rebels a terrible blow and,’ Ozzel gestures to Iro. ‘Apparently our own internal Mole has been dealt with. I fail to see what the emergency is.’ 

Tarkin wonders if he could send Ozzel into a Forlorn Hope situation without calling too much attention to it. Who was it that named the first men over the wall in a siege the Forlorn Hope? It gives it such a poetic connotation that he is not entirely certain he approves of. However, it perhaps allows men to romanticize their inevitable death enough to take the plunge. He had been in a Forlorn Hope before, more than once actually. In the Outer Rim chasing after pirates and that sheer, exhilarating terror of plunging over the wall of a siege into waiting enemy soldiers - there is nothing like it. It certainly reminds a person they are alive. Even if they are only alive for another five minutes. A lot can happen in five minutes. 

All of this to say, Ozzel would last perhaps two and that would be preferable to hearing his opinion in another council meeting. 

Wilken perks up at Ozzel’s mention of the mole, ‘this leads us to a very important question, Grand Moff.’ 

‘Which is?’ 

‘Where should Krennic be tried since the Senate has been disbanded? Where he is from? Where the crime was committed?’

‘We can set up a review here. Make sure the evidence would stand up in a military court.’ 

Wilken positively preens as the motion is agreed to. Tarkin wonders if Wilken could be sent into a Forlorn Hope as well. Or, what is it that Krennic suggested once? Shove him out of an airlock and blame it on a malfunction. The council is adjourned and Wilken says he will have his secretary put together a case file for members to read over. This should be handled quickly and discreetly. Once it is settled that they have a strong enough case they can decide under whose jurisdiction he will be prosecuted. 

  
  


He cannot sit still. The cell is too empty and too quiet. Krennic paces. He sits down then stands back up. He bites his nails then stops because it is a disgusting habit and one he was sure he had beaten years ago. He bangs on the wall that connects to the princess’ cell and she thumps back and yells something that sounds suspiciously like ‘shut the fuck up’.  

He hums. He thinks, I cannot be here. There is too much to do. Adkin is good but not good enough to oversee the entirety of the armoury overhaul. He wonders if she believes the charges. He wonders if Linden does as well. He wonders why he cares if they do or not. He kicks the cell door. 

The slat slides open and the guard asks, ‘what do you want, traitor?’ 

‘My name isn’t traitor and I want to see the Grand Moff.’

‘Your crime is and I don’t think so.’ 

Krennic rifles through his pockets and finds a back of Alderaan smokes, he takes two out. ‘Hey, these are from Alderaan. Do you want them?’ 

The guard eyes them with some envy. ‘I could just take them off you. You were supposed to have been searched.’ 

‘I’ll bite you if you try anything,’ Krennic snaps back. 

‘You go from zero to crazy in no time, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

‘I’d rip your tongue out.’ 

‘All right, all right. I’ll make the call. No promises that he’ll come.’ 

Krennic hands one over, ‘you’ll get the second after I see you call him.’ 

The guard goes to the consul in the wall and punches in the code for the Grand Moff’s office. Krennic can hear the voice of the secretary which sounds small and metallic through the speaker. He says he will pass on the request, but no promises. The guard goes back to the door. 

‘All right, I did as you asked.’ 

Krennic pushes the second one through the slat. ‘I’m innocent you know.’ 

The guards nods, ‘oh sure, every one’s innocent.’ He pulls out a lighter and lights one. ‘Can’t believe they blew up Alderaan.’ 

‘Yeah, well, shit happens.’ 

‘Sure, shit happens. But what a waste, eh? Best food in the galaxy there. Hmm they had these fried fruit things.’ 

‘You can make that anywhere.’ 

The guard shakes his head, ‘no, no, not like this. Shame, is all. But I guess they had their reasons.’ 

‘Must have.’

‘Did you see it?’ The guard blows out smoke. ‘The destruction of it?’ 

‘Yes. We all did I think.’ 

‘Something else, wasn’t it? I mean Jedha and Scarif were intense but this was crazy. Absolutely crazy. You know no one thought it was possible.’ 

Krennic makes a face. 

‘Everyone thought you were off your rocker. I mean, no offence sir, it is a crazy notion. Blowing up a planet.’ 

‘No more so than anything else we’ve done to achieve peace.’ 

‘True. I guess.’ 

The comm buzzes and the guard goes to it. Returning his expression is thoughtful, ‘the Grand Moff is apparently on his way.’ 

‘Best put that out, then. You’re not supposed to be smoking on the job. And you didn’t get it from me.’ 

‘I will. I’ve got another five before he arrives. Thought he hated you.’ 

‘Who?’

‘The Grand Moff.’ 

‘He does.’ 

Muffled, from Leia’s cell, they hear, ‘he’s a fucking cunt’. 

The guard knocks on her door, ‘none of that language, princess. He won’t take kindly to it.’ 

Something is fired back but Krennic cannot make it out. He returns to the ledge that functions as a bed and smooths his tunic, arranges his thoughts and attempts to calm his mind. It is like fireworks. He is anxious and angry and worried about his work. He thinks, When he arrives I’m going to punch him in the face. 

Naturally, when Tarkin slides open the slat in the door all Krennic does is make a rude gesture. 

‘I didn’t do it,’ he says. 

‘I believe everyone says that,’ Tarkin replies as the guard opens the door. ‘But I’m prepared to hear your case.’ 

 

Down the hall is an explosion. Krennic sees Tarkin and the guard turn towards the noise when the lights in the cell block go out. 


	16. Chapter 16

The first thing Tarkin sees is a flicker of fire and there is Krennic holding his lighter up as the guard fumbles for the emergency lighting. The hall becomes soft red as the emergency lights flick on followed by the baleful tone of alarms. There is smoke and neither the guard nor Tarkin can raise the front security to the cell-block. A flash of static, voices, then nothing. 

Tarkin scowls at Krennic as he shoves the lighter away. ‘You should have been searched, Lieutenant-commander.’

‘I was.’

‘Our searches evidently need to be improved then.’

‘They do.’

Pulling out his tablet Tarkin finds a flurry of messages flashing on the screen all tagged urgent. All sent within the last two minutes. He scans them, sees nothing of use to him, and pulls up Wilken's contact and his voice comes through. Around the edge of it Tarkin can hear panic and does his best to refrain from rolling his eyes. Has no one on this station dealt with rebels before? Panic is the last thing they need at the moment. 

‘What is going on?’ Tarkin asks. 'I want details.' 

Wilken, ‘we appear to have been infiltrated.’

‘I gathered _that_ much, Admiral.’

‘We believe it’s rebels.’

Tarkin breaths out. Krennic mutters something that sounds like ‘absolute genius’ which Tarkin decides to ignore.

‘Where are they? How many do we estimate? Send me the latest intel and I’m heading to the bridge as we speak. I also want data on how they got in. Where’s the weak spot in our vetting process for vessel entry?’’ To the guard he snaps, ‘and put him back.’ He waves at Krennic.

‘I haven’t done anything treasonous! Let me help.' 

The unmistakable sound of blaster fire. The body of a trooper slides around the corner leaving a smear of blood behind as a trail. The white chest plate is marred red. Both Tarkin and the guard draw weapons. There is no movement from the direction of the dead trooper. Whoever is attacking them is taking their time coming around the corner.

This is the worst vantage point, Tarkin thinks. We’re just target practice at this rate. He glances back to Krennic who has relocated himself to the back corner of his cell and seeing the advantage of changing locations as well scoots into the doorway. From this angle he can see whoever comes towards them but has at least some cover. In the back of the cell Krennic vehemently complains about his lack of a weapon and how none of this is his fault and had people not been so obsessed with laying false charges on him maybe they’d have noticed the rebel incursion in time. 

‘Do you ever shut up?’ Tarkin hisses. The smoke from the first explosion is finally clearing and visibility steadily improves which is a boon and a hinderance. Voices speaking in hushed tones can be heard. They're last minute planners, Tarkin thinks. They're doing this half-hazard. Which is odd since previous actions by the rebels speaks to strong planning skills and in-depth knowledge of imperial operations. From the comm in the wall Tarkin can hear someone shouting something about a lightsaber and a man in robes like a monk. _Jedi_. He assumes Vader is taking care of that. How strange, though, that there should be one here. He had thought them all gone. 

A slow breath out. Then the rebels turn the corner open firing. Tarkin counts only two and a Wookie but their aim is half decent and in such a small space as the corridor it doesn't take much to hit your target of choice. The two humans are wearing ill fitting storm-trooper armour, most likely acquired by dubious means. He fires at them then pulls back as a shot misses his face by centimeters. The door jam is charred black. He turns back to fire and finds the guard lying on the floor, his blaster a foot from the cell door.

Evidently seeing the opportunity Krennic scoots beside Tarkin. He whispers, 'cover me and I'll go for the blaster.' The pros and cons are weighed in a split-second.

Tarkin replies, 'you half one chance and best move quick.' Krennic darts forward. The rebels shoot, managing to wing his shoulder before he grabs the blaster and is back in the cell.

‘Why do they always fucking hit my shoulder?’

‘Less talking, more shooting.’ A pause as Tarkin jabs at recent calls and gets through to Wilken. ‘We still need back up in the cell block. The rebels have come for the princess. There’s two humans and a wookie at the moment. What's the situation on your end? I heard something about a Jedi.’

‘We're trying to send some to you. And Vader is taking care of the old man.’ Wilken shouts, his voice still small in the speaker of the tablet. 'Fucking doors won't open.' 

‘Well fix it and get backup down here!’ He tabs it off and returns fire.

Krennic leans over and dials Wilken again. 'There's a service elevator that runs on a separate system so if the rebels have overridden the main elevator drive then have troopers take the service elevator in the E-quadrant. It should still work.' 

'You're supposed to be in a cell!'

'I am.' Krennic turns it off and returns full attention to the situation in the hall. 

One rebel runs forward as the other two provide cover fire. He shoots open the lock on the cell door and darts inside. 

Tarkin hears one say, ‘you the princess?’ To which Organa replies, ‘you took long enough.’

‘Oh fuck this,’ Tarkin mutters leaning around and shooting at the two providing cover. With the princess’s cell door open he can’t get a shot at her or the other rebel. The four make a dash back the way they came. Tarkin grabs Krennic, ‘come on. I need backup and you’re the only one here.’

‘Will this be taken into consideration for my case?’ Krennic asks as they bolt after the rebels.

‘Not thinking about that right now.’

‘That’s fine, but I am.’

A rebel turns and shoots, Tarkin finds himself shoved against a wall and where his chest had been there is a blaster hole in the opposite wall. Krennic stares at the hole then looks at Tarkin, ‘I should have let you take that,’ he says. 

‘No you shouldn’t have. Then it’d just be you against four of them.’

‘I see logic in battle sacrifices is only applied when it’s you on the receiving end.’

‘Not this again.’ Tarkin motions for them to follow after the rebels. 'I thought we've been over this more times than is necessary.' 

‘I don't know. I think we should hash it out a few more times.’

‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’

They catch sight of the fleeing four and follow after. Managing to wing one the rebels disappear around another corner. Then the sound of something opening, a door perhaps, and the princess saying ‘into the garbage chute fly boys.’

They round the corner and watch as the last of the rebels jumps into the garbage chute. A sound of them falling then gears shifting as they are allocated to what the system deems is the right disposal unit. 

‘Well, at least they're contained.’ Tarkin says as he pulls up Wilken on his tablet again. ‘We have them, they’re in the garbage chute. In - Krennic which disposal unit will they be in?’

'Most likely recyclables. The computer would have picked up on the trooper armour and assumed it to be reusable waste.' Krennic opens the door to the chute and looks down. As expected, nothing to see. He stands back and stares at the wall. Tarkin can see his lips moving then Krennic nods to himself, walks down two paces, and slides open a panel. Looking down he can see the four rebels standing in refuse and attempting to climb upwards. ‘I’m going to film this,’ he says. ‘Can I borrow your tablet? They took mine before I was rudely imprisoned for a crime I never committed.’

‘Why do you want to film them?’

‘I need to show Nial what’s in our garbage chute. It’s destabilizing some of the plumbing and I want it out but he’ll know best how to approach it.’

Tarkin leans in and looks down. ‘There’s something in there?’

‘Yes. Can I film them being eaten?’

‘No.’

‘It’s for work. I can’t get this thing out until I know what, exactly, we’re dealing with. I have some suspicions, I’m fairly certain it’s a dianoga, but Nial will be able to confirm.’

Tarkin pulls his head out and dials up Yetsa, ‘they’re in the garbage compactor in the recyclable sector. Get them out before whatever is in there eats them. I want them for questioning.’

Leaning against the wall Krennic closes his eyes. His shoulder begins to throb as the adrenaline winds down. He does his best to focus on thoughts other than the impending injections from the sick bay. Needles, he thinks, why are needles a thing? The thought of the inevitable nullicaine nausea brings about pre-emptive nausea. Entropy, he chides himself. Think about entropy and buttresses and stress impacts and architectural decay and the stress of gravitational pull on orbiting ships and sun spots and super novas and Esma's latest message from home and— He opens his eyes, looks at his shoulder, the sight isn't pretty but not as bad as Scarif. He pokes the charred flesh. Perhaps they won’t have to jab him with anything. Looking up he finds Tarkin watching him.

‘What?’

‘How long until the garbage chute creature realizes they’re on top of it?’

‘No idea. We’ve never tested that.’

A grinding noise begins. Oh right, the compactor. There is the dim sound of the Wookie making frantic noises. 

‘Not sure we can stop that,’ Krennic says. ‘The compactor is on an automatic timer and the override can't be done from the comm stations in this hall.’

‘So they’re going to be crushed before they’re eaten?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is a mess.’ Tarkin jabs at his tablet as several stormtroopers round the corner. ‘For backup you’re remarkably late. They’re in the garbage chute. Someone get them out. I’ve been ordering that for five minutes now and I’ve yet to see any movement. I am _highly_ displeased.’ He calls Wilken and Yetsa, ‘they’re still in there. I want them out before they’re crushed to death.’

Yetsa, ‘we have someone on it.’

The grinding stops.

Tarkin sighs, ‘about time.’

‘That wasn’t us, sir.’ A pause. ‘A protocol droid seems to have overridden the compacting orders.’

Tarkin slides open the door and looks in again. The princess looks up to see him. She aims her blaster at him but he pulls away before she can shoot.

‘They’re still alive for the moment.’ He says as he closes the door. There is the sound of a blaster shot hitting it. To Yetsa and Wilken over the tablet, ‘we need them out of there before they escape. And before —’

Shouting. Tarkin sighs and hauls the slide open again. Two rebels and the princess are making a commotion and the fourth is thrashing in the putrid water.

‘Hopefully it eats only one,’ Krennic says pushing himself next to Tarkin at the slide. He looks down with evident interest. ‘Yes that’s a dianoga. Full grown, too. Hopefully it hasn’t bred yet. It's remarkably difficult getting hatchlings out.’ They watch as the rebel manages to free himself from the creature. Leia, once the rebel has dislodged himself, looks up to see them again. She shouts something that sounds like, ‘couldn’t you help us up or something?’ Krennic shouts down, ‘sorry, we couldn’t hear you.’ Tarkin pushes him away from the opening.

‘Right,’ Tarkin nods to the troopers still present. ‘Three of you take Lieutenant-commander Krennic to the sick bay then back to his cell.’ Raising a hand at Krennic’s inevitable protests. ‘We will deal with these rebels first then your case.’ Turning on his heel he slides the panel closed and walks down the hall.

 

When it is reported that the rebels have escaped Tarkin isn’t sure if he should be surprised or not. What he does know is that things have been run poorly of late and he is getting to the end of his patience with whatever scheme it is that the emperor has planned regarding all of this. Is rooting out one or two incompetent men worth the safety of the empire?

This strays down an uncomfortable path of self-reflection and he pulls himself up from it. Regardless of anything, of everything, he must own that Krennic is right. Too much time has been spent on _him_ when it ought to have been spent finding the actual mole.

He opens up the files Yetsa transferred to him before the entire recent debacle began. The spy’s work ethic is evident by the sheer size of each officer’s unofficial file. He dismisses most off hand and goes directly to Wilken’s since he has been a recurring figure.

Tarkin finds embarrassing spending habits, a tendency in Wilken’s youth to be caught with his hand in the till, a penchant for only one sex position, and the usual batch of potentially problematic relatives but nothing untoward. No worse or better than most career officers. He rubs his eyes and leans back in the chair.

When was the last time he took a shift off? He tries to remember. Too long, if that is the case. But he hardly can now, with the rebels and the escaped princess and Vader on the hunt for them and the emperor calling every five minutes for updates and Krennic’s unaccountable treason case.

There’s a link in this chain and he’s missing it. He hates this. It is deeply frustrating to have this much information and not be able to make anything from it. He has organized the missing surveillance feeds by time and date, by location, by shift, by every possible category and nothing clicks. He has gone through all officer’s movements. Nothing. He has gone through official files. Nothing. He’s currently going through unofficial files. Still, nothing. He wants to shoot something but now that the rebels have cleared out there’s no viable target practice.

He pulls up Krennic’s file from Yetsa’s stash and finds too many reckless driving charges from the former director’s youth that had been covered up or paid off. Whoever let Krennic get a license at fourteen was an idiot. A few expected class-C drug carrying charges from the same time, all dropped. Then nothing while he is in the Future’s Program beyond a speeding fine here and there. Tarkin pulls up the family. The father was an anarcho-syndicate participant in his youth. Tarkin finds himself surprised at this as Krennic is one of the more apolitical people he knows. The mother has nothing of interest which is suspicious in and of itself. He continues flipping and finds nothing he didn’t already know. A propensity for grandiosity, for manipulation, recklessness, for bending rules to the point where they snap, a tendency towards obsession, an inability to remain inactive, and a tendency towards self medication. All in all, a typical imperial officer.  

He closes all the windows. The room regains a warmth without the blue hue of the holo-files. I need an hour break, he thinks. That will improve my ability to think logically and—

‘Sir?’ His secretary materializes at the door to his office.

‘What?’

‘Meeting request, urgent, from Director Wilken.’

‘Oh for fuck’s -’ a harsh sigh. ‘I’ll be there. His office or the council room?’

‘His office, sir.’

 

Krennic does not appreciate what nullicaine does to him. He also does not appreciate that the sick bay does not appreciate what nullicaine does to him. He wants to vomit. Perhaps he can aim for Wilken’s bleeding plants. Who has _two_ plants on their desk? That speaks of something terribly wrong with the man behind said desk. A mental instability.

‘I wanted to clear the matter of what you were doing outside your cell before we focus on how the rebels infiltrated the Death Star,’ Wilken says. His palms are flat on the desk and his look of displeasure reminds Krennic of a toad. Round face, pursed lips. Perhaps the green hue to Wilken’s skin is his nausea projecting itself. He closes his eyes and attempts to focus.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Krennic says when he has regained some purchase on his stomach upset. ‘I was _helping_ you when they broke in. I wasn't doing anything untoward. If I was a traitor don’t you think I’d have run off with them?’

‘The facts remain, Lieutenant-commander. Aside from recent infractions, your actions as Director are suspect due to-’

‘Doesn’t that make you suspect as well? They also infiltrated under your command. They are the ones that benefit from our preoccupation with snapping each other’s heads off. When I was on Scarif they shot me. If I had been on their side would that have happened? Any security breach during my time in command does not make me a traitor. Perhaps I trusted one or two people too much, but that isn’t a crime. I’ve dedicated my _life_ to this empire and you think I’d go and sell it up river? You think I’d go and sell _everything_ I’ve done, all my work, up river?’ He stops abruptly. He can hear the dreaded Lexrul accent coming out and swallows it back. He breaths out, attempts to calm himself. The stupid flower on Wilken’s desk is the worst colour of yellow. Either the flower goes or I go, Krennic thinks. He wants to laugh. What a mad thought that was.

There is a commotion in the front office that can be heard through the door. Wilken comms Caruso, ‘what is going on out there?’

Caurso, ‘nothing, sir. Just two lieutenants who wish to see you. They won’t state why.’

‘Names?’

‘Lieutenants Adkin and Linden, sir.’

‘Is it urgent?’

Further commotion before Caruso answers, ‘no, sir. I don’t believe it is.’

Wilken glares at Krennic, ‘do you have anything to do with that?’

‘With what?’

‘Whatever mess my secretary is dealing with regarding your subordinates?’

Krennic scowls. He thinks, Probably. I did ask Adkin to follow him. This provides some hope. Perhaps she found something! Perhaps there is a chance this will all work out and they can go back to how things were before this nonsense began.

‘I’m sure they have valid reasons for being here.’

‘Unless they state why it can have no bearing on you or this case.’ He nods to the troopers. ‘Take him back to the cell. Now,’ he turns back to the remaining officers. ‘About the rebels.’

 

The one hour break he scheduled for himself doesn’t happen. Tarkin is in his rooms and going through the Erso-Krennic correspondence again. There are about one hundred and fifty messages concerning radiation build up. He feels exhausted looking at them. Caf or whiskey? He decides that he deserves a whiskey. Halfway to the drinks cabinet he changes his mind. He diverts back to the caf machine and makes a half-pot.

Why was Krennic cc’d on one hundred and fifty engineering memos? Erso was too thorough in letting his supervisors know what —

He stops that thought. Erso was trying to hide something. What better way to hide something than in two hundred messages on one dull, mind-numbing subject that you know are not going to be read completely?

Just as he reaches his desk his comm buzzes.

‘This better be important,’ he snarls. His secretary’s non-plussed voice comes through saying that there are two lieutenants present and they have some information for him. Apparently it’s important? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t really care. Just, could Tarkin see them so they’d stop pestering him? They’ve been here for an hour and won’t leave.

‘Send them through.’

Both Lieutenant Adkin and Linden enter. Tarkin remembers them from Krennic’s enthusiastic complaints about his transition to the MEP. He recalls that the Lieutenant-commander spoke highly of one and not the other.

‘Make this quick.’ He sits down, closes the windows and folds hands on desk. The young man appears to lose his calm and shuffles from foot to foot. His companion is made of sterner stuff. She holds up a memory drive.

‘This is information that was sent out of the Death Star by Lieutenant Caruso, sir. We’ve managed to un-encrypt most of it but there’s still some we couldn’t get to.’ Adkin hands the memory card over. ‘From what I could see it looks like coordinates and schematics. More detailed than a general overview. There were also pass-codes and other security information along with a massive file of mostly code that I couldn’t decipher. It’s in the folder “wh_rb”.’

Tarkin turns the memory chip over in his hand. Caruso. The secretary. Smoke clears and visibility returns. He nods, This explains _everything_.

‘How did you get this?’ He asks.

Adkin takes a deep breath in. ‘I was acting independently,’ she begins which Tarkin interprets as “Krennic told me to”. ‘I thought that the Lieutenant was behaving in a suspicious manner and followed him. He stopped by a comm station near the MEP Bay and sent a massive file and I managed to retrieve a copy of most of it.’

‘You didn’t report this immediately?’

‘I wasn’t sure if it was relevant, sir. When we managed to open it we realized that it was _quite_ important but then the rebels infiltrated the base and things got a bit busy for a while.’  
  
A flicker of a smile. Tarkin nods to her. ‘This was well done, Lieutenant. I will take it into consideration as we move forward. Dismissed.’


	17. Chapter 17

The heavy weight that sits in his gut is not one Krennic is used to. He dislikes the way it crawls from stomach on up spine to shoulders so he is tense and only realizes it when he remembers to breathe out completely. Then he is still. The leg that is always bouncing stops. The fingers that are always playing with each other - twisting and pushing and pulling at skin and knuckles and nails - stop. He holds it there. The breath out. Feels the way his lungs want to fold in on each other.

He had watched a man die of a collapsed lung once. It had been ten years ago and the man had been ill then one day gave out after a coughing fit. Krennic had watched him die. It wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it and the manner of death was interesting. The warning signs precipitating the interesting manner of death were also important to document in his memory for future reference. All respiratory problems and sucking wounds now made him assume that whoever had them would probably die of a collapsed lung. Ridiculous, he knew. But the association could not be helped.

He only knows time by the changing of the guards and none of these new ones are as nice as the one who took the blaster shot during the fracas with the rebels. They took his smokes from him which, he now thinks, is probably why the twitching is so bad. Currently a shift is changing. He is hungry. He gets up and bangs on the door.

‘Hey,’ he shouts. ‘Open up.’

The slat slides back. A guard sneers at him. Krennic thinks, This one is _decidedly_ more ugly than the last one.

‘I’m hungry,’ he says. The guard’s expression does not change. ‘I could use something to eat. Even the shoddy rehydrated crap they give our long-journey teams will do.’

‘You’ve already had your meal.’

‘I know but it wasn’t much. And I think someone spat in it.’

‘Not my problem.’ The slat slides closed. Krennic sighs. Stares up at the ceiling. He needs a way to bide time and paces the cell before prying off a button from his uniform and testing it on the walls. Ah! It leaves a mark. Settling on the ledge that serves as a bed he begins sketching. He is pleased with the development of the likeness of the Death Star and thinks he and Tarkin had been going about it all wrong. Deconstruct and rebuild, within that process there is a chance of discovering where, initially, you went wrong.  
  


The arrival of Tarkin is not entirely a surprise. Krennic is attempting to add detail to an ion-cannon but it is difficult when the only tool to hand is a button. He tries a fingernail but chips it for the effort. He thinks, This is what I have come to. How steep the fall!

The slat slides open. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ the guard says. He does not sound impressed. The door opens and Krennic turns to see an equally unimpressed Grand Moff.

‘Drawing on the walls, Lieutenant-commander? I would have thought you to have bypassed that stage of development by now.’

‘Let me have something to read then. Or a proper notepad.’

‘You really are an obsessive person. Is that the Death Star?’

‘I was attempting to jog my memory concerning our still unsolved problem of the weakness.’ The button is placed in trouser pocket and he stands out of some attempt at normalcy and decorum. Tarkin turns and motions the guard out.

‘You can take a break,’ Tarkin says.

‘I’m on duty, sir.’

Tarkin turns his back on the man and says over his shoulder, ‘I said you can take a break.’ This apparently registers and the guard around the corner. Tarkin waits until the sound of boots fade before closing the door. ‘You faithful Lieutenants were busy while we were fighting rebels, it seems. The clever one-’

‘Adkin.’

‘Followed Carruso, apparently on her own initiative which I can only assume you encouraged, and found that he was sending massive amounts of information to the rebels. Much of it is irrelevant but enough is important to cause some alarm.’

‘I _knew_ he was a cad.’

Tarkin raises an eyebrow. Krennic amends, ‘well at the very least I never liked his face.’

‘You don’t like most people from what I can gather.’

‘Not like you’re a social butterfly.’

‘I can be quite social. But the point remains that the mole is almost certainly Caruso.’

‘So I can go?’

‘Not yet,’ Tarkin eyes him. Krennic scowls. He hopes that whatever jollies Tarkin is getting off of his being in a cell will sustain him. Because once I'm out, Krennic thinks, I am going to throttle him and never speak to him again for dragging me through this ridiculous sideshow.

‘I’d be best pleased if I were able to leave now.’

‘Life does not work to best please any of us.’

Krennic turns. Stares at the wall. Fumes for a long moment before spinning back around the usual flourish lacking due to cape removal. ‘I saved your bleeding life.’

‘And the empire is most thankful.’

‘I am not a _threat_ or whatever term you’d prefer.’ Krennic dislikes Tarkin’s expression. It seems to say: I beg to differ. ‘Don’t make that face,’ he snaps. ‘It doesn’t suit you. Anyway haven’t I been humiliated enough by the creaking bureaucracy of the empire?’

‘That is not for me to say.’

The space of the cells is not large and Krennic notes the considerable lack of distance between them. This is the moment when he wishes he could put a few tables between them. Just so he can be angry properly without becoming both angry and aroused. These things happen at the most inconvenient times. He goes back to thinking about ion-cannons for a moment. Snapping at Tarkin, currently the only person on the battlestation with any sort of power to free him, is not the wisest life choice. He refrains. Remembers to relax his shoulders.

The shift in his stance is mirrored in opposite by Tarkin who tenses then reaches out to pull Krennic against him and one hand undoes Krennic’s tunic before loosening trousers and pushing down.

‘Fuck your hands are cold,’ Krennic hisses, shifts, attempts to focus suddenly scattered thoughts. He had a question for the governor but cannot remember it at the moment. ‘This isn’t going to distract me from being angry at you.’

‘I never thought that it would.’

‘All right, fine.’ Hands are warming up, Krennic appreciates the temperature change and rubs forward as he undoes enough of Tarkin’s uniform. He finds himself being walked backwards towards the bench and they stop when it hits the back of his legs. ‘What are we doing?’

‘I don’t have anything on me.’

‘The one time you’re unprepared.’

‘We’ve only fucked out of my rooms once, Lieutenant-commander.’

This Krennic owns as true and wonders how best to make this work since the cell is cold and after the age of twenty-five, for him at least, certain temperatures make it a little more difficult.

‘How’s your shoulder?’

‘Getting creakier with each blaster shot but it’s fine.’

Tarkin nods as he pushes Krennic onto the ledge and flips him onto his stomach. Krennic frowns at his sketches in front of him. He can feel trousers and tunic being adjusted, hips lifted up and a hand squeezing his ass then going between legs, cupping his balls, a slight tug on his prick.

Krennic breathes out. Shifts his legs to adjust the angle of his hips. Fingers tease his entrance and he feels Tarkin suddenly over him and there is breath against the back of his neck, the sudden warmth of a body that close, the press of Tarkin’s cock against his ass.

‘How badly do you want this?’ Is hissed against his ear. His blood is currently pooling in his groin and he thinks, Oh fuck me, fuck me. But out loud he snaps, ‘not that badly. Not without-’

The hand that had been pressing, just slightly into him, is now braced on the ledge and Tarkin hums as he pulls away. Krennic licks his lips. He is staring at his graffiti Death Star and thinking both about how much he really wishes there was a cock shoved up his ass and where the everlasting fuck is that weakness.

Tarkin taps his hips, ‘turn over.’ Krennic huffs and rearranges himself. The graffiti is now upside down. He thinks, Ah! A new perspective. It does little to enlighten him. Hands push his thighs apart, and Tarkin dissatisfied with the position, pulls Krennic up and pushes him against the wall before lowering his head and taking Krennic cock into his mouth.

First Krennic blinks then he looks down then he can’t look because it’s too much so he looks up to the ceiling and wants to rut his hips forward and oh that mouth is warm and the hand wrapping around the base of his prick is tight and he wants to fuck Tarkin something bad. He thinks, When I’m out of here I’m going to fuck him on every piece of furniture in that bleeding office of his. Every. Piece.

The hand goes from his cock to his balls and Krennic hips shift as he sucks in breath to remain quiet. He wonders how hard Tarkin is. He wonders if Tarkin is thinking about fucking him or being fucked or both. He wants to come. He wants to come down Tarkin’s throat and on his face and on his chest and up his ass and _on_ his ass and just really he wants to come. His hands ball into fists then unclench then again. He can feel his balls tighten. He manages a murmured, ‘I’m close’ because he was raised with some manners. Tarkin’s hand moves back to Krennc’s prick with short, tight pulls as he sucks on the top.

Krennic’s mind unwinds itself. He is immediately present and trying to hold off a second or two longer. He is also thinking about a hologram star he once whacked off to. At the same time he is traveling through the schematics of the Death Stare overlaid with old emails and there is one mentioning a thermal exhaust port below the main port and if you were to dive down that thermal exhaust port you’d die of radiation poisoning, potentially, but you’d also hit the reactor core. If you were to shoot the thermal exhaust port, successfully —

He is back in the present with a gasp. He comes.

Tarkin’s mouth tastes like him as he kneels over Krennic’s lap idly stroking himself. Krennic pushes his hands away and adjusts himself before wrapping his mouth around Tarkin’s cock and decides that next time he needs to explain his ‘no hands in my hair’ rule. But at the moment it is fine. Being between the wall and Tarkin’s hips is novel and disorienting at first but there is enough space to maneuver and the occasionally hitched breath from above pleases him. He thinks, Were I younger I’d probably be able to get hard again. And also hopefully my jaw wouldn’t get tired so quickly.

Krennic plays with Tarkin’s balls, remembers the feeling of them slapping against his ass. He can feel them tighten and the one hand remaining in his hair tightens a fraction. He pulls back, moves his hand to stroke and when Tarkin comes it is with something like a muffled moan.

They dress.

 

‘That weakness in the Death Star,’ Krennic says adjusting his belt and tunic. ‘I think I figured it out.’

‘Just now?’

‘I’ll tell you if you let me out.’

‘You are hardly in a position to barter.’

Krennic frowns, 'Just let me out. You know Caruso is the mole, not me. Or do you just want to make me stew in here for as long as possible? What is it about me that makes you so petty? You have my Death Star. You are essentially in command although Wilken pretends otherwise. And that is soon going to be put to rights. All the while I’m demoted to Lieutenant-Commander of the MEP Bay and now have had my reputation further trashed with this false treason accusation. Your victory over my career trajectory is complete.'

‘Oh calm down, it is hardly so personal as that. And there are very good reasons to keep you where you are.’

‘Not so personal as that? I would call it _deeply_ personal. To the point where it has affected your ability to make sound decisions.’ The absurdity of the situation does not escape Krennic and he feels, suddenly, as if he is in a landspeeder careening towards a cliff and all the while he can still taste Tarkin in his mouth. Perhaps is the exhaustion or the stress or the lack of food or the lack of discreet smoke breaks but he can’t stop. The cliff draws ever closer. He has always been one for suicidal decisions. ‘I have gone through the last little while in my head so many times it is bridging on the ridiculous. I have made piecemeal of events and your problem with me, based on oh I don’t know what, jealousy? Rivalry? Regardless, your issue with me, which is clearly _personal_ , have impacted your decisions as governor, Admiral and Director.’

‘This is farcical, Lieutenant-commander. You are clearly exhausted and speaking rashly.’

‘I've been arrested for a crime I didn’t commit, a crime _I know_ you know I didn't commit, and now believing I have the solution to our mutual problem of potential impending death, and keeping you abreast of developments and trying to solve the issue of the Princess not talking and _like fuck am I speaking from exhaustion._  You want to talk hot headed and rash decisions? You want to point the finger at me and say all sorts of things about my upbringing and my heritage and my bloodline having negative impacts on my abilities as a Director, as an architect, as an engineer when you are guilty of the same faults as myself. You’re just too proud to see it and we all might die because of it. I have never known such a bull-headed man-’

‘ _Enough_. I have no problem with you personally, merely with your sloppy and unprofessional approach to running a military weapons program. I believe I have been more than fair with you since Scarif, all things considered, but if you wish to play this game, very well, I will let you consider your options. Lexrul has less to offer than Alderaan.’

‘Oh yes go blow up every planet in the galaxy governor. Become the emperor over your wasteland of stardust.’

 

Tarkin's fury is palpable until as suddenly it disapates. He is calm. That lake Krennic thinks he is drowning in, at times. In this pause his words catch up to him. He closes his eyes, lets out a sigh, thinks, _Oh fuck._

In a thin voice Tarkin asks, ‘do you know why I think you should remain in here for the time being? Are you done ranting?’

‘I’m done.’

‘Because at the moment I do not have enough evidence to hit Lieutenant Caruso with the hardest charges possible. I will, I have no doubt, but I don’t at this precise moment and if I were to let you out—’

‘The game would be up. Right, right, I see it.’ Krennic does not think he can stand being in this cell a moment longer. The start and stop silences are brittle glass. Why Tarkin hasn’t left yet is a mystery. Krennic knows he would have if it had been him. ‘About what I just said—’

‘I have decided that you have been under a lot of stress and lost yourself for a moment. Therefore, it never happened.’

‘Bullshit but fine. What I was going to say is that I stand by everything, only perhaps I could have said it in a gentler fashion.’

‘There is no place for gentleness in our lives.’

Krennic quashes his immediate rebuttal of 'that sounds like some of the shit I heard in a philosophy class in the Futures Program'. Instead, he inspects the thought but finds that it does not become prettier on the inside. Which he knew before he autopsied it. Crickets.

‘Niall once said that he had been a bruiser as a boy, ran with the wrong crowd, sharpened down can tops to put between knuckles so when he punched someone...but then he ended up going to Alderaan and had seen art, experienced the beauty of a building lit only by fire, listened to operas and found a gentler way to be.’

‘Niall is your father.’

‘Yes.’

‘Paltry, sentimental thoughts. Your father wasn’t in the military.’

‘No. But you cannot discount what a man has to say simply because of his occupation.’

‘Depends on what he’s talking about. Good evening, Lieutenant-commander.’  
  
‘Governor.’


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay. My life took a nose dive for a while.

It is late and too many message files later when Tarkin decides that he really ought have pressed Krennic for the information rather than aiming for a dramatic exit from the cells. He ought to go back and get it. His skin feels dirty with the thought; such behaviour is too much like _him_. Although he must admit that his skin also, possibly, feels dirty from a lack of a wash and rest. He ponders scalding water. The thought appeals. He flicks through more messages attempting to focus, to find the one that is evidently buried in the avalanche.

When he stares at the words for too long they do begin to lose their meaning. It drips off them and lands on the floor. The carpet is damp with their symbolism. Here is Erso saying, ‘we need to restructure the firmament.’ Is that a coded metaphor? Or is he just paranoid about foundations? Krennic is paranoid about foundations, Tarkin now knows. He has gone through too many messages and memos and white papers in Krennic’s massive, never-purged inbox to not know that Krennic is paranoid about foundations.

What does it mean to restructure the firmament? He knows. Literally, that is. He wishes to claw himself back to literalness. It is the only way to be.

He searches his office for clues to literality. An ashtray on the table by the wall. His drink collection in the corner. His tablet by his elbow. He thinks it an interesting psychological tic that most people could tell him with greater accuracy where their tablet is before they could describe where their right foot is. Both, for him, are grounded and stable. The tablet resting on the table, his foot on the ground. He reminds himself to remember to always know where he is at every precise moment.

He has not been remembering lately.

He recalls a conversation with Krennic when they had been staring at the schematics for too long and their eyes were hurting from the light. Krennic had asked, ‘do you mind if I smoke?’ And Tarkin had minded but Krennic did it anyway. The Lieutenant-commander had spoken of something about his father who he mysteriously calls by his first name and then he had waxed poetic about this building in Stratavan that was so monstrously ugly it was beautiful. He had asked, ‘when does the monstrous become divine? Why do we accept monstrosity from divinity but not divinity from monstrosity?’ It had been metaphorical and rhetorical. He had not wanted an answer so Tarkin had not supplied one.

Tarkin does not approve of these memories but no matter how hard he focuses on the rigour of the present, the structure of the space he inhabits, it cannot stem or steady the acceleration of the past.

He buzzes for his secretary. ‘Send me Lieutenant Adkin.’

‘It’s her off-shift, sir.’

‘I don’t care.’

While he waits, and in an effort to blast the acceleration of the past into nothingness, he watches the security tapes filed under Caruso’s name and cross references them with data deposits sent out from the Death Star. Correlation is not causation except in this case Tarkin is damn sure Caruso, after Erso, is the cause of a good many problems. Information is sent out then the princess rescued. Information is sent out. The rebels arrive at Scarif. So on and so forth. Moles are communal animals.

Adkin enters with a nervous expression and poorly brushed hair. She has it jammed under her uniform cap but it escapes in all directions when she takes it off.

‘Wht_rb.’ Tarkin says. He pulls up the files Adkin had saved from the consul. ‘What sort of object is this? I understand you have a background in systems managements.’

‘Yes, sir. A little, sir. Objects contain code and have a certain behaviour or function. Think of them as code bundles and when activated they will do what they have been programed to do. They can also contain information, which is what I assume this one is for since Lieutenant Caruso was exporting large files.’

‘Have you opened it yet?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘In the decoded files you have recovered have you noticed any patterns?’

‘He sent a lot of maps, sir. Coordinates. Passwords as well, but otherwise not much in terms of personal information.’

‘In that one particular file dump at least.’

‘Yes, sir. Random bits of code, some caches which I’m not sure why they were sent. Odd bits and drabs of information that I’m not sure is useful.’

Tarkin taps the file and it pulls up a password request. Adkin suggests one and he tries it but with little success. An error sign flashes then the password request is reset. They go through another three before Adkin apologises and says she does not know any others.

‘Those worked for the other files, but Lieutenant Linden and I are still decoding, sir. I’m sure we will find the password soon.’ She hesitates.

‘You have a question, lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir. Is this particular file high priority?’

‘Not particularly. I only noticed that it was structured differently than the others and so I am curious what it contains.’

‘We will get on it, sir.’

She salutes, leaves his office. He finds the past colliding with the present namely he thinks: I ought to go and ask, nay demand, the answer from him. When had he noticed it? Upside and looking at the schematics drawn roughshod on the wall.

He pulls the all too familiar files up and rotates the image so he is looking at it upside down. He cannot see it.

Infernal pride, he knows. It is sheer infernal pride that he cannot go and ask because that would be admitting. He stops the thoughts there. Stands, goes to the drinks cart and pours himself a whiskey. It is peat moss all the way down and so pleasantly earthy in a way that nothing in space is.

Krennic had said, _you are guilty of the same faults as myself_. The thought is not a pretty one. He dislikes any comparisons between himself and Krennic because the man is the antithesis of who he is and who he strives to be. He is calm, collected, steady, sound. Krennic is the opposite of sound. Nothing about Krennic is sound save his architectural skills. Krennic is lush and decadent and manic and obsessive and loud and crass. He has little tact and is too crudely blunt by half. Tarkin does not doubt that he has faults, all people do, it is unavoidable, but he does not have the same one’s as Krennic. The faults he has are ones, he hopes, that do not give rise to ridicule.

These thoughts serve little purpose so he packages them away in the back of his mind. Once seated back at his desk he crafts an update for the emperor explaining the loss of the princess, in as tactful a manner as possible, and letting him know that Lord Vader has been sent after her. He adds an addendum to the end: the Caruso and Wilken affair will be finished shortly. It is a matter of decoding something first.

He writes, ‘good news is the weakness in the Death Star has been located.’ He does not feel the need to add more.

To his secretary he says, ‘contact the counsel, I wish to inform them of new information pertaining to recent events.’

  


The silence of the council chamber is thicker than the defence shield around the emperor’s star destroyer. No one is looking at one another which is typical behaviour, in Tarkin’s experience, of people who see a precipice looming and do not wish to fall over it.

Wilken has gone from enraged to embarrassed back to enraged. ‘This is not causation!’ He snaps. He gesticulates at the videos which are playing on loop above the chamber table.

‘Interesting, Director.’ Tarkin pushes a button and the decoded parts of the leaked files appear. ‘What do you think of this?’

It is lists of passwords. Of recent coordinates. Of personal files belonging to both the current and former director. Tarkin marvels at Wilken’s facial expressions. They are manifold and ever changing. At least the director sits down in his chair, cheeks blotched, he says, ‘we must speak with him directly. I am sure there is an explanation for this.’

Caruso is sent for.

A thought occurs to Wilken and he perks up, ‘what if they were working together?’

‘Caruso and Erso? I have no doubts. They were on the same project after all.’

‘Caruso and Krennic.’

‘This is why he’s still in the cells and didn’t run off with the rebels when he had the chance. Perfectly sensible.’ Tarkin pulls up more of the decoded files. The room is dense with uncertainty. It gains that putrid smell of the fearful. ‘I dislike the former director as much as you, I am sure, but I fail to see the connection. It seems we have all been played for fools by your secretary.’

‘What about you, Grand Moff?’

Humans are not capable of remaining completely still. It is not physically possible. There will always be minute, tiny movements of hands, of stomach, of chest. But if it were, the entire room would be glaciers.

Tarkin asks for clarification. He asks it very delicately.

‘You aren’t the only one capable of accessing footage. You and Krennic have been conspiring in secret. How do we know this isn’t a ruse?’

‘Were I you, director Wilken, I would choose my next words very carefully.’

‘What were you discussing then? If you have nothing to hide…’

‘The Death Star schematics. There are things at work, director Wilken, that you are not privy to and so were I you I would not presume too much upon my position or assumption of knowledge.’

Wilken takes this moment to look around at the room. At the faces of the men and women at the table and finds that none will meet his eye. Tarkin is opposite him. The blue from the projects reflected on his face. There is a smile. It is thin. Brittle like ice.

Tarkin’s secretary enters the council chamber. ‘I’m sorry, sir, it appears that lieutenant Caruso has gone. He took a ship within the last six hours.’

‘Alert Lord Vader. I want him found.’ Rounding back to the table. ‘From here on out I am in charge of the Death Star. Any and all concerns and issues will be brought to my attention.’

‘On whose orders?’ Wilken asks.

‘On the emperor’s.’ He nods to his secretary who reappears with two guards. ‘I think it’s time you acquaint yourself with the cell block. It is your collusion with a traitor that concerns me most at the moment. And anyone else who may have been involved.’

To Tarkin’s surprise Wilken goes quietly. It is perhaps the shock or the anger at the accusation. Anger can mute as much as it can provide voice.

  


Time in the cells, Tarkin laments, has not improved Krennic’s temperament. Once fed and bathed the lieutenant-commander finds him and demands to know why he was kept in their so long and Tarkin snaps that it’s like he completely forgot their conversation which was only twelve hours ago.

‘More to the point,’ Tarkin says, pushing Krennic against a wall and loosening trousers. He ignores the eye-roll. ‘Where is the weakness?’

He wants to wipe the smirk off Krennic’s face.

‘Couldn’t find it could you?’

‘As director of the Death Star I order you-’

‘You’ve been waiting to say that--’

Tarkin kisses him. Krennic laughs, shimmies sideways and scoots across the room towards the drinks cart.

‘I want full credit when you tell the emperor.’

‘I will not barter with you.’

Krennic pours them both a drink.  

‘A better position, then. I’m bored of the MEP-Bay.’  

Tarkin takes the proffered drink but believes that a reply is unwarranted. Krennic takes a sip, admires the liquor then goes to Tarkin’s desk. Swiping his tablet on he pulls up the schematics and goes to a thermal exhaust port.

‘Were the rebels to fire at this, successfully, it would set off a chain reaction that would lead to the entire battle station becoming Alderaan only less impressive.’

‘And what is the likelihood of that happening? It seems miniscule.’

‘One in a million chance but they’re bloody minded enough to do it.’

Tarkin zooms in on the exhaust port, follows it to the reactor core. In his mind is Alderaan and Jedha and Scarif. What are those once famed places? Asteroid belts and craters.

‘And we can repair this,’ he says.

Krennic sighs, ‘that was the problem. Finding a place for it. But give me time. I’ll figure something out. It’ll be one of those fixes that is so obvious I’ll hate myself for not having seen it sooner.’

 

The problem with Krennic, Tarkin later thinks as the man sits astride his lap, is that he is in competition with more important thoughts. It is a pulling. Like a black hole and his attention sways inwards, towards it. Tarkin firmly believes in the freedom of the will and the autonomy of decisions but for the moment, this one that he currently inhabits which may differ from moments he will inhabit in the future, but this particular moment he is content to substitute the freedom of will and autonomy of decisions for not knowing which future he will undress in and pretend to be happy to hold his breath.

Afterwards, Krennic smokes. He says, ‘I feel like I’ve been living in the subjunctive.’ He traces Tarkin's thumb, the thin bones of his hand. 'You believe you are the indicative tense I know.' 

And Tarkin says, ‘that is the maddest thing I have ever heard you say.’

They share the fag.


	19. Chapter 19

Lexrul’s geographic locations as designed with human intervention are polygon in nature. At least those created post a civil war that happened sometime in Krennic’s great-grandfather’s lifetime. Polygons have a venerable place in Lexrulian architectural history and so the application of this ancient form in a recently ruptured society makes sense to him. He argued at a conference on architectural history once that the very use of the polygon shape in post-civil war Lexrul was a means of re-creating unity after deconstruction. Polygons are structurally sound. Their centres hold.

Krennic and Tarkin are in Krennic’s room and Tarkin is sitting half dressed with physical copies of the Death Star plans half covering his lap. Krennic is speaking and drawing furiously at the same time on the floor.

‘The polygon has many derivatives and motivations when applied in architecture. It is always symbolic, even if it merely a subconscious symbolism on behalf of the architect, its meaning never to see the light of day. Pass me the ruler to your right.’

This is yet another problem with Krennic, Tarkin thinks, he cannot remain focused. They were going to fuck then suddenly they weren’t anymore because Krennic thinks he has a solution to the exhaust port situation. Tarkin thinks he should probably return to his office or demand Krennic pay attention to their initial purpose. The reason he is currently working on the floor in only his briefs.

‘One of the oldest buildings still standing in Stratavan is a polygon used to tell time rather enthusiastically called the Tower of the Suns. We only have one sun. My forefathers were easily excitable.’

Tarkin says, ‘I am shocked.’

Krennic looks up at him and makes a rude face. ‘It was designed by Androtia. It had five dials for marking the sun and above them five gods from some old faith no one follows anymore. Above the gods two suns. Like the symbol of the Fiorites.’

‘The Fiorites?’

‘Didn’t I tell you about the Fiorites? Oh, no, it was Lieutenant Adkin. They’re an odd group. Live in the desert, aesthets who take it too much to the extreme. They have bestowed upon us three ways in which the galaxy might end and we are all destroyed except them who will be transported to some other realm.’

‘How disturbed are these people?’

Krennic sits back on his knees and spreads his hands, ‘they live in a desert and wear hair shirts. Sanity is not a requirement.’

‘I would assume sanity not a requirement for most on Lexrul.’

Krennic points a ruler at him saying that he takes offence. He is perfectly sane. It’s everyone else on the planet you have to watch out for. Blaster-slinging, marsupial eating madmen.

‘Fiorites believe that we are to enter the third age, which is the last, and that we must do something to precipitate it. Galaxy-wide war or speed up galactic cannibalism. Turn us from a Spiral into Irregular galactic formation and kill most of us in the meantime. Which is, coincidentally, happening. But too slow for their timeline. Speed up our favourite heat death of the universe. Of course, they’re insane to even think that mere humans have that capabality.’

‘Mere humans are capable of a great many things.’

‘True.’

They both look down to the innards of the Death Star laid out in exquisite detail. Tarkin says that only mere humans would think to play universal destroyer. Previously it was only stars or other galactic forces of space that could render planets obsolete. Now that power is in the hands of man.

‘Maybe your strange religious fellows are capable of rending us into nothingness.’

Krennic shakes his head, ‘no, no. They’re too wrapped up in themselves. Anyway, polygons are also associated with life on Lexrul and as a means to restrict evil.’

Tarkin leans over so they’re faces are inches from each other, ‘have you solved your dilemma?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Are you going to solve it in the next twenty minutes?’

Krennic looks down at his sketches and fast and loose calculations. They hover about the edges of the Death Star’s core reactor. He sighs the deep sigh of a man interrupted.

‘Most likely not.’

‘Then, as I am infinitely busy and have scheduled forty minutes for this, please do not waste the last twenty.’

Krennic pulls the papers off the bed and climbs back on making sure to let Tarkin know that he has possibly interrupted genius. Tarkin does not deign to reply. Krennic takes this as a sign to continue and explains how inspiration works for the more artistic minded as he pushes Tarkin into the mattress.

‘It’s not constant, when an idea strikes,’ Krennic explains as he undoes Tarkin’s trousers. ‘You sort of have to run with it. Or write it down and hope you can remember the details later. The military has no appreciation for this.’

‘And yet here you are.’

‘And yet here I am because this is where the funding and interesting projects are.’

Tarkin reaches up to push Krennic over but has his hands caught and pinned back, one against the wall the other into the mattress. Krennic leans over him and presses their mouths together. Krennic’s teeth skirt along Tarkin’s jawline to neck to collar bone and he reaches down with one hand to shove the undershirt up. His fingers follow the bottom arch of ribs down the side to hip over to prick. Tarkin’s one free hand tugs at Krennic’s briefs trying to pull them down but it proves difficult. And Krennic’s hand on his cock is distracting. Tarkin bites back a noise.

‘What are you doing?’ He hisses as Krennic returns to shoving his undershirt up and, finally letting go of his other hand, over his head. It is deposited with no grace upon the floor.

Krennic mutters into his neck, ‘I want you.’

‘I gathered that much.’

With both hands free Tarkin yanks Krennic’s briefs down and they pull away as Krennic kicks them off before pushing Tarkin back down before their positions can be switched. Tarkin’s expression is one Krennic cannot read entirely so he chooses not to look too closely. Pushing Tarkin’s thighs apart he wonders how far he’ll get before Tarkin will push him off and say something caustic before fucking him face first into the remaining pillow on the bed.

The fact that he has gotten to the point of pulling the lube over and even now, to the point of pressing fingers in is a marvel. He thinks that he is terribly hard. He thinks that he wants to come at the idea of fucking Tarkin. He thinks he had better not because this is most likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He thinks he should probably look at Tarkin again and not his neck or the even breathing of his chest or his prick or his hand between Tarkin’s legs.

Tarkin’s expression is now one of quiet interest. Krennic kisses him again before fucking his fingers into Tarkin completely. A breath out, Tarkin’s legs spread a fraction further, Krennic mutters something like ‘fuck’ and wants to come. Tarkin smirks.

Pulling fingers out Krennic grabs Tarkin’s hips and turns him over. He pesses them back in and adjusts the angle until he hears a soft hitch of breath wherein he fucks harder.

‘I am on a schedule,’ Tarkin says with something akin to a moan at the end.

‘All right, all right.’

A pause as Tarkin is pulled up to his knees and Krennic adjusts himself before entering him. He stops for a moment, prick half in and waits as muscles relax before thrusting in completely. Tarkin’s head drops to the mattress and one hand is wound in the sheet as Krennic begins moving.

A snarl of ‘harder’ and he knows he’ll leave fingerprints on Tarkin’s hips as he thrusts. Krennic leans over at one point, mouths dirty words into Tarkin’s shoulder blade in whispered half moans as one hand is pressed against the wall, the other still on Tarkin’s hip. The sound of skin on skin on sheets of balls slapping of breath escaping between teeth and lips is all lewd. Is all filthy. He had thought himself long past the age of thinking of such things as dirty but he cannot help it and it is and it is everything he wants because yet it is lewd but it is also divine and monstrous and glorious. It is like the destruction of Alderaan only with fewer dead bodies. Fearsome.

When Tarkin comes Krennic can feel his body clenching and then unravelling. Krennic bites his lip, holds Tarkin up and fucks him spent until he can hear a soft moan and cannot help himself so comes  with them both sliding back down to the mattress. A gentle landing. Descents can be soft, Krennic thinks, I always thought them painful things.

  
  
  


Despite the attempts to decode it Adkin cannot open the Wht_rb object. Every failed attempt leads to a screen flashing up with a caption saying that she did not say the magic word. She even tried using ‘please’ as a password for shits but it didn’t work.

‘I am about this close to chucking the key and my tablet into the garbage chute,’ Adkin says through a yawn. Lindon is twenty files deep into one of the few remaining folders and mutters an agreement.

‘Don’t do that,’ Krennic says as he walks up to them. They startle, sit up straight, adjust their work station. ‘It’ll upset the stomach of whatever lives in there. Did we ever get a positive identification?’

Adkin stutters a ‘no, sir, maybe sir, I’m not sure sir. You’re back, sir!’

‘I’m back sir indeed. And don’t the both of you look pleased.’

Adkin grins and spins the visual of the object around and explains her issues with accessing it. ‘I think it’s a command, sir, and that could be a problem.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well this is just a copy of it. I think Caruso placed the command somewhere in the Death Star’s system and if we don’t know what it was programmed to do…’

‘I follow, very well. Have you taken it to IT?’

‘They’ve been leaving rude messages in everyone’s inbox about the clogged up communication lines.’

Krennic sighs, a dramatic flourish. What is IT there for but to solve such situations! What do we need? More storage space? More drive room?

‘A raise,’ Linden mutters.

‘I will pretend I didn’t hear that. Take it to IT.’

Adkin nods and says she will do so as Krennic swans off towards his desk. She slumps back down into her chair.

‘Well,’ Linden sighs. ‘He seems in a good mood. Surprising considering he was in a cell until recently.’

‘Madman,’ Adkin replies with the air of a great philosopher. ‘I hope he doesn’t have anymore pet projects for us.’

‘I cannot secretly rewire another section of the Death Star, I refuse.’  

‘I cannot redesign the redesign of the armoury of the MEP-bay, I too refuse.’

They sit in contemplative silence until Krennic walks back over with a cup of caf. He looks at the projection of the Wht_rb for a moment before suggesting a species of plant. Adkin tries it but no success.

‘Wilken’s obnoxious plant,’ Krennic explains. ‘It’s still on my desk. The Grand Moff says that it adds “character” to the office.’

Adkins and Linden exchange looks. Lindon discreetly mouths, ‘madman.’  

Krennic continuing, ‘as if my office needs it. It’s perfectly good the way it was before other people began messing with it. If any of the settings on my monitors are changed when I get it back I am going to hunt them both down and kill them. I’ll stare into their eyes as I do it to.’

Krennic stalks back to his desk. Linden flicks a loose rubber band over to Adkin. Adkin picks it up and gives him a look, ‘what was this about the man’s good mood?’

‘Spoke too soon clearly.’

Adkin heaves a deep sigh and closes the Wht_rb tab and reopens her armoury redesigned redesigns.

  


Fractals are a thought that occupies as Krennic works to fix the issue surrounding the exhaust port location. He likes natural geometric repetition. When sand storms blasted the desert external to Stratavan the lines in the sand, the blasted rock, were fractals. He knew their look, their language of creation, their mode of existence before be knew their name. Naming came later at the Future’s Program within piles of texts on physics and maths and he dreamt in numbers for a time.

Fractals repeat and like a galaxy expanding itself, its symmetry (that, less like a galaxy). Fractals at certain values, when presented to humans, reduces stress. They are soothing, fit the desire of the human brain for order.

Krennic adjusts the Death Star model and runs a simulation with the exhaust port in a different local, one that would prevent interference from bloody minded rebels.

The Star explodes. Shards of blue projection pieces fly past his face before it reassembles back in perfect order with one imperfect aspect. Krennic scowls at it.

Fractals in nature are finite. There is no ability to zoom in on them hundreds of thousands of times in order to see the same pattern over and over. Krennic believes this is nature’s subtle way of reminding humans of mortality. All must end. We are born but astride a grave. So on and so on. He really needs to either take a break or have more caf. He opts for caf.

 

Snowflakes, heart beats, coastlines, mountains, trees, blood vessels, crystals, ice, frost, algae, horns of certain animals, planetary rings, soil pores, proteins, rivers, fault lines--

 

What if he moves the angle of the port rather than the entire location? Change the trajectory and so external entrance is difficult. They could increase the protective shield layer in the area as well. He remodels the simulation accordingly and runs it.

It appears to work. A blue hued smile. He sips his caf and pulls up a blank document. Time to work out the maths for it. The details upon details.

Fractals can also be unstable. In the earliest drawings of a fractal curve only a few clues of the underlying mathematical structure can be seen. It is only with subsequent drawings of fractal curves that changes may appear and as more details emerge the internal instability of the system’s structure begin to appear.

Krennic was never one for hypothetical mathematics but as he recreates his beloved Death Star he wonders about the fractures within it, the empire, the galaxy as it stretches out towards inertia, that have become so tangible.

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

If there is a calm before a storm Tarkin cannot feel it. Krennic is antsy as the repair work begins on the exhaust port and the contagious nature of it annoys the Death Star’s new director. 

‘The men pick up on the mood of their officers,’ he snaps as Krennic runs the math again. ‘It creates an intolerable atmosphere which increases the likelihood of error.’ 

Krennic scribbles a note then flings himself back into his desk chair so he is sprawling. The MEP-bay is empty save for the enterprising Lieutenant Adkin at her desk with files up. Tarkin suspects they are related to Caruso. Nothing is as it should be. His skin itches at the lack of order. 

‘Butterfly effect,’ Krennic says. ‘Alderanian butterflies, big as my arm, flap their wings and on the other side of the planet a storm strikes.’ 

‘I am aware of the theory of minute localized shifts causing broad system-wide changes and the more complex the system the more likely it is for underlying failures to come causing possible impossible system recovery.’

Krennic spreads his hands, There you go. ‘We have seen small tremors. There is a potential for that system failure.’  

Tarkin shakes his head, ‘I disagree. The mathematics only suggests a greater need for courage. We live in a galactic empire predated by a galactic republic. We do not function on small and containable scales, every system we exist within - both manmade and natural - is complex and fault ridden. It takes a greatness to render control over them.’ 

Krennic does not appear convinced by this but chooses not to reply returning instead to his simulation. He enters a different set of values and everything remains stable. 

‘What if you flew the largest rebel ship right at the exhaust port,’ Tarkin suggests. 

Krennic replies, ‘I already did.’ Tarkin stares at him. An expression of horror dawns on Krennic’s face, ‘was that a joke?’ 

‘I do not joke.’ 

A look of extreme skepticism. 

‘Just throw the entire armada at it.’ 

‘You are certainly joking...and I have.’ 

‘Every ship in the galaxy.’ 

‘Come off it.’ 

‘Everything.’ 

Krennic huffs, ‘if you’re not going to be useful,’ he waves his hand. 

Tarkin watches as a new set of values are entered representing a different configuration of rebel ships and the Death Star shatters around them. Krennic complains and throws a paper ball through the holograms. 

Leaving the Lieutenant-commander to complain in the mostly absent MEP-bay save for Adkin who is making herself as inconspicuous as possible Tarkin returns to his new office. 

A strong, pungent smell is immediately obvious and Tarkin locates the source as one of Wilken’s plants. It is flowering and the petals are a deep red with yellow dusting of pollen. It reminds him of the forests of Eriadu in late summer. The sickly sweet scent of dying flowers that clings to the skin. Saturates hair and flesh. It always makes him feel nauseous and claustrophobic. 

Buzzing for his secretary he indicates the expanding foliage, ‘these can go.’ 

‘Sir.’ 

‘Send them to Lieutenant-commander Krennic.’ 

‘Sir.’ 

Tarkin waits until the plants are gone before adjusting the rest of the space. With the recent constant flair-ups of rebels and moles he has not had a chance to make his new office orderly. The seat is changed, the monitor projection adjusted, and the temperature altered to a more neutral level. Wilken apparently liked it cold which means that he will be well suited to his current residence in the cell block. Tarkin does think it a wonder that the evidently tropical plants survived.

His tablet buzzes with a new message as he arranges the contents of the desk drawers to his satisfaction. Towards the back is an energy drink, most likely left over from Krennic’s tenure. He deposits it in the waste bin. The wide windows of the room provide a spacious view of the galaxy. 

The tablet buzzes a second time. He slides it on and Krennic’s message reads, ‘I personally fed them to the garbage chute.’ The second one, ‘Nial thinks the flower poisonous. I made Linden poke it. His finger is bright red.’  

What indescribable childishness. Tarkin refrains from replying. Let Krennic stew with the memory of Wilken’s plants, the knowledge that the Director’s office will certainly never be his again, and his obsessive perfecting of the exhaust port problem which is entirely  _ his  _ problem to begin with as it all goes back to Erso. 

As Tarkin lays out plans for the remainder of the shift his secretary comm’s him, ‘sir, there’s a message from the cells.’ 

‘Go on.’ 

‘The prisoner is asking to speak directly to you, sir.’

Tarkin considers the request. He looks at his schedule and wonders if it worth it or should he send a proxy instead. There is a twenty minute block between a meeting with planetary governors of the Outer Rim and a meeting with the Emperor. He replies that he will see to the matter. It is probably best to keep the audience of Wilken’s ravings limited. 

  
  
  


The cell that Wilken has been relegated to is the one previously used by Princess Leia. Tarkin slides the view slot open and finds Wilken sitting with a fearsome expression. His eyes meet Tarkin’s and lip curls back into a sneer. 

Tarkin closes the slot then opens the door and steps in. 

‘We are quite busy so be quick,’ he says as Wilken stands. 

‘You have it wrong,’ Wilken spits. ‘I don’t know anything about what Caruso is doing or did do. He dupped us all, Admiral. I was  _ not  _ complicit.’ 

‘Then you were just grossly negligent, I am sure that will weigh just as well with the emperor--’ 

‘I did nothing wrong! Everything was going smoothly-’ Wilken stops. He appears to reconsider his words as they ring oddly parallel with the previously disgraced Director. He adjusts his stance and bears his weight on the balls of his feet, lifts his chin and throws shoulders back. The unfurling of an animal ready to fight. Tarkin smiles something chilling. ‘I do not understand why you don’t take my other theory plausibly.’ 

‘What? That Caruso and Erso worked together? Or at least knew of each other? I have no doubt.’ 

Wilken shakes his head, an action that reminds Tarkin of a hound in a corner. There is a similarity in jowl movement. The sluggishness to Wilken’s flesh makes Tarkin feel only distaste and contempt for the man before him. The contempt is mixed with pity and disgust. Not even at the worst point in his in-fighting with Krennic did his views of the former Director involve contempt and disgust. Annoyance, frustration, anger, general dislike at the constant chafing but not contempt. Krennic was always too intelligent and capable for that. Certainly never disgust. 

Disgust is for worms. Pity for the pathetic. 

Wilken is ranting about Krennic and Caruso and Erso and ill processed, half-formed thoughts, accusations fly through the cell. Growing bored with the display Tarkin holds up a hand and Wilken stops mid-sentence. 

‘Do you have anything beneficial to add?’ 

‘I will take this up with the emperor!’ 

‘Will you?’ 

‘Your obstruction, admiral! I certainly will. How you deliberately ignored sound advice regarding potential further moles. I will let him know about that and your sneaking around with one of the potential subjects.’ 

‘You’re blathering, sir.’ Tarkin’s voice, although never warm, is vacuum cold, iron and gunpowder cold. ‘I would cease before I hurt myself, were I you.’ 

‘Some of the worst traitors in history come from the highest ranks!’ 

Wilken’s expression changes as his words catch up to him. Tarkin lets him sit in the silence. The room has the putrid smell of fear and sweat. 

‘I’ll let you consider your future,’ Tarkin says with silk in his voice. ‘And the future of those you love most.’ 

Wilken sits down. Decompresses into the bench, swallowing and picking at cuticles. Tarkin watches him for a moment before opening the door. Turning back around he says, ‘your effects will be processed. You are allowed by regulation to have one object sent to your wife.’ 

Wilken nods but Tarkin knows he is not listening. Where once a human face resided is now a mirrored one that rests in both terror and resignation. An inhuman look for a man reduced to base animal fear. 

  
  
  
  


Time on ships is a strange beast. It slips and slides, demarcated with unnatural light, unnatural sleep schedules. Time not spent working is spent attempting to make it pass faster, slower, between shifts. 

There is Lieutenant-commander Krennic playing a card game against himself beside the sunlamp in his room as he filters messages from work, colleagues, Nial asking about the creature in the garbage chute, Esma wondering when she is next going to see him. 

Lieutenant Adkin gets drunk in the Death Star bar and challenges Linden to a game of darts making the dirtiest, foulest mixed drink they can invision the penalty for loss. Later she is watching bad holo-shows in bed and contemplating poor life choices she could or could not make. 

On the bridge Tarkin is prowling and asking for updates from Vader on the pursuit of the rebels only to receive cryptic responses about a disturbance in the force. As if that is going to help him defeat them! Off-shift he reads until Krennic shows up with a backgammon board and says he needs someone to play against. That it’s been an age. Work on the exhaust port is slow and he isn’t needed. Tarkin obliges. 

Time compresses in constrained spaces and even though the Death Star has space enough for 1.7 million people and droids in total the claustrophobic nature of ships cannot be escaped. The rest of the galaxy is at once present yet separate. 

  
  
  
  


Tarkin contemplates how best to impose imperial rule  on the few left unwilling to bend a knee. He thinks there is something to be learned from the early colonisers of Eriadu who took control of the history of the indigenous on the planet, told them what their past was, renamed their plants and rivers and mountains. Creating knowledge and imposing it on people so all they know and understand of the world and the galaxy is what you want them to know and understand. 

‘What happened to the first peoples of Lexrul?’ Tarkin asks. Krennic is reviewing the current status of the exhaust port repairs and so buried behind blue screens and muttering to himself. 

‘Dead I think. Most of them. Some are still around I suppose.’ 

‘What do you know of their history?’ 

Krennic shrugs, ‘not much. They built some splendid buildings but when they were conquered it was sort of taken over.’ 

‘That is the nature of conquering.’ 

‘No, no.’ A pause as Krennic lowers the tabs on the exhaust port repairs. He rummages through the files on his tablet before pulling up a hologram image of a column. At the top Tarkin can see what looks to be an opening where people could stand and implications that there had once been more to it. Glyphs are etched from the bottom halfway to the top. Krennic adjusts the settings so it rotates slowly. ‘This was once part of a temple for the first peoples of Lexrul. A general rule of thumb for architectural historians, if we don’t know what something was used for we assume it was for religious purposes.’ 

‘So in actuality you have no idea what this tower was built for.’ 

‘None at all. But there are sound reasons for assuming it was religious. I won’t go into them. When the first peoples were conquered and colonized the motifs and languages of their buildings were plundered for meaning. The architectural elements reused. This was the first big colonization of Lexrul in the deep past. There have been a few others since. Now, today looking back, we read all sorts of strange narratives into who conquered who when and make vast assumptions about the power and display of those events.’ 

‘I’m assuming the conquests followed the traditional line of entering a space between warring forces and aligning yourself with one or two so you can be seen as their liberator.’ 

‘Oh yes, that was the long and short of it. We have the line of restoring their history to them, their buildings, their images. The imperial present being better than the non-imperial Before. You know all the usual impositions. Architecture is a common site for renegotiated pasts. Old glories, such as this tower, can be used both as a representation of liberation at the same time as it a de facto commemoration of imperial mastery over planetary history. I’m assuming it was the same on Eriadu.’  

‘Not quite. We did more burning and salting, metaphorically and literally. Less reusing. I think it was deemed too risky an investment initially and then became tradition. For initial conquests I agree with that approach however for later time, or more complicated situations such as what is facing the empire now, I think the imposition of imperial identity through,’ he motions to the tower, ‘such means as that more palatable.’ 

‘There will always be upstarts,’ Krennic says as the tower is disappeared. 

‘Indeed. But best to make them as aware of their mortal nature as possible.’ 

Krennic agrees with a fluid movement as he reopens the exhaust port files and maneuvers the current schematic details of the port and demonstrates how adjusting the angle and the location as he has done will negate much of the current threat posed by bloody minded rebels. 

‘And so hypothetically speaking, if the rebels were going to destroy the Death Star now, with a fixed exhaust port, how would they go about it?’ 

‘You’re the director,’ Krennic snaps. ‘You figure it out.’ 

‘And you’re the architect. Sometimes part of being a director is asking and delegating.’ 

‘I don’t know, I suppose they’d have to figure out how to open doors.’ 

‘Metaphorically you mean?’ 

‘Of course.’ 

‘From the inside out, then. Crash the entire system.’ 

‘Something like that.’ 

‘Security has been updated since the latest with Caruso and Erso.’ 

Krennic says that is good, that is well done then asks, as is obligatory almost every time they see each other, ‘the emperor?’ 

‘He is busy.’ 

Krennic points out that everyone is busy always. Being busy doesn’t actually mean anything. Ignoring the pointed look Tarkin considers the legs of his whiskey and the schematics projected between them. 

‘What?’ Krennic asks. 

‘Something’s bothering me. We’re overlooking something.’ 

‘You’re getting paranoid.’ 

Tarkin does not dignify the statement with a response. He sends a message to his secretary to schedule a council meeting for the next shift. 

‘It’s probably to do with fractals and bad math,’ Krennic says philosophically. ‘It usually does.’ 

Tarkin ponders fractals and an obscure memory from the dusty reaches of his mind comes up from a book he read ages and ages ago as a young man. Then their conversation from several days ago, as far back as a week was it? Time and ships. Ships and time. Things collapse inward upon themselves. It makes him think of waves and sand and coquina and Scarif. 

He sips the whiskey. Krennic natters on about systems. 

On once-was-Alderaan, when a butterfly flaps its wings it can cause a storm on the other side of the planet. 

Storms in space are caused by interplanetary magnetic fields, solar wind, stars behaving poorly. There is no flap of a creature’s wings but they happen regardless. 

 

Sometimes, centres cannot hold. Sometimes, things fall apart. But he will damned if such things will happen while he is in charge. 


	21. Chapter 21

Fungi is resilient. It can be found in temperatures below freezing and those hot enough to melt steel. It grows in dark and light, in boot polish, paint, ink, cooling water systems of nuclear reactors, deserts, underwater, on your scalp and within space stations. 

Currently, there are over 350 different fungal varieties in the Death Star, and that is only in the habitable parts used by humans and other carbon-based creatures. 

Tarkin thinks this disgusting. Unsurprising, considering how many people, plants, food products, animals, aliens and the like are existing - living, consuming, excreting - on the station but it does not mean such facts are pleasant. 

Fungi is both a product and agent of decay, it is simultaneously of and for death. 

It is Krennic who is messaging him about fungi as he sits in a hologram meeting with other galactic governors. Because of course Krennic is messaging him about fungi. Tarkin does not respond. This does not deter Krennic. Krennic is nothing if not resilient. 

The holo-conference flickers. Tarkin frowns and pulls up the data on the connection. It looks to be clear and strong so there should be no reason for the flickering images. 

‘Excuse me,’ Tarkin says to the other governors. ‘There seems to be an issue with connectivity on this end. I cannot hear you completely.’ 

One of the governors replies, ‘--sir, we will recon-- at thirteen hundred-- for you?’ 

Tarkin comms his secretary, ‘what is going on with the external lines?’ 

‘I’m not sure, sir, they are buggy for everyone. It sounds like they are being used for something. It was just white noise when I tried to reach the emperor’s office to arrange your next call.'

Tarkin turns back to the flickering holograms, ‘we will reconvene at a later date.’ Assuming they understood the gist of what he said he turns the conference off and heads down to the bridge.    
  


 

Alderaan butterflies. If this has to do with Alderaan butterflies Tarkin is going to be deeply annoyed. 

Fungi, he amends, if this has to do with fungi and Krennician caffeinated rantings he is going to be deeply annoyed. Perhaps it isn’t a good thing that man survived Scarif. Perhaps it’s a bad thing indeed. 

He passes by a repair crew heading towards the reactor core and subsequent exhaust port. 

All right, it isn’t all terrible. Krennic did have his uses, just as the Emperor said he would. Oh joy, the emperor. He was supposed to have a meeting with him to touch base on the latest disturbances on board the Death Star. 

Arriving on the bridge he finds it chaotic. Frantic crew, stressed officers, screens flickering in and out.

Ozzel in a panic, ‘you got here quick, thank fuck. We have no external comms.’ 

‘Not here either?’ 

‘Nowhere on the ship. I just tried to comm you but the line was tied up.’ 

‘Internal then, too.’ 

Ozzel wears the expression of a man calculating how much of the current situation is going to be blamed on him. It is an unattractive look. 

‘Have security and IT rig up a temporary external line, we need to be able to communicate outside. As for internal, issue talkies. There are enough for each quadrant to have ten. We will run with those until the lines are back on. And I want to know how they went down, stat.’ 

_ Unless they figure out how to open doors _ . Metaphorically of course. The memory twists through his mind, the language carved and curious. An etching into his recollections. Open doors, open doors, open doors.  _ Damn.  _

Officers skirt and scuttle around the bridge avoiding eye contact and busy themselves trying to get things back to how they should be. 

There are moments when mysteries unfurl themselves. When Tarkin had been a young man in the wilds of Eriadu he had lifted up a dead log and beneath it had been grubs and the thin white tendrils of fungi. Of and for the dead. He had eaten both the insects and the mushrooms and returned the log to its resting place as if it had never been disturbed. 

This is the moment of the log being lifted up and the thin tendrils of the rebellion’s plans laid open and naked to the mind’s eye. He can see Caruso exporting data, leaving behind an unhackable object in place. One no had wiped from the system, one no one had been able to open. An oversight. 

An oversight. 

The rebels weren’t opening doors so much as locking them. 

‘Sir,’ a small voice from one of the bridge monitors. 

‘Yes?’ 

‘I think more systems have gone offline. I think we’re losing control of the Death Star’s computers, sir.’ 

Tarkin breaths out, feels the pressure of empty lungs and muscle on chest plate. The Death Star without its computer, without its complete system is nothing but a frozen, metallic hulk in space. And a completely vulnerable one at that. He will not allow this. 

‘Well haul them back online,’ he snaps. ‘I want all support staff on this.’ 

  
  
  


Every system has its limits. Flaws become severe and eventually reconciliation impossible. This is the moment of courage. The courage needed to face the implications of fissures spreading thin fingered nodes through firmaments. 

  
  
  


The Death Star tremors with the first impact of the rebel ships as Krennic and Adkin come running onto the bridge with no request or by-your-leave. This would normally cause a stir but there is enough happening that it is hardly noticed. 

‘Pull up the screen,’ Tarkin orders one of the men standing by the consul. ‘I need to see what is happening.’ 

An image comes up, distorted and with blocks missing but through the noise Tarkin can make out the rebel ships. 

‘I want all available TIE-fighters out now.’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘Are the blaster stations manned?’ 

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘Good. And someone get the shield back online.’ 

Tarkin thinks that this is not the time for Krennic to be on the bridge. He will only confuse things.

‘What do you want?’ He snaps as Krennic hovers near him. 

‘It’s the thing Caruso left in the system. The object.’ 

‘Yes, I gathered that was the cause of our current confusions.’ 

Krennic waves Adkin over and the young woman shifts before explaining in a rush that the Wht_rb object had been programmed to shut down the entire computer and power system of the Death Star. 

‘It can be activated remotely which is the most dangerous part,’ Adkin says. 

‘Power supply,’ Tarkin repeats.

‘Yes, sir.’ 

‘But we haven’t lost it. We aren’t running on backup.’ 

‘Not yet, sir.’ 

Tarkin spins on his heels and stalks over to one of the command stations and punches in orders. They should not feel the tremors of ships hitting the Death Star. They should feel nothing at all but there is a second one. 

‘That was one of the rebels hitting a southern hemisphere quadrant, sir,’ an officer reports. ‘They’re concentrating their efforts here.’ She pulls up a diagram of the Death Star. ‘There are several diverting elsewhere but it looks like this is the main focus.’ 

‘The exhaust port,’ Krennic says. He folds his arms and watches the blurred footage of rebel ships circling the Death Star. ‘It won’t work, their plan. The angle is wrong now.’ 

Tarkin takes a moment to step back from the imminent fighting to look at the broader situations. The exhaust port is inaccessible which means the reactor core is safe from their blaster fire. The TIE-fighters are out and cleaning up. When the communications systems come back online and Caruso’s Wht_rb object removed it will be back to order and function. Everything is going as well as can be expected, he thinks, this is no Scarif. 

Beside him Krennic is tense. It rolls off shoulders and twitching fingers. 

‘If that is all, Lieutenant-commander,’ Tarkin murmurs. ‘You are dismissed.’ 

Krennic glares, purses his lips to complain then the lights dim. A dusty yellow hue as emergency lights kick on then everything out, complete black, then the desert yellow before everything comes back on. 

‘The fuck was that,’ Adkin whispers from behind Krennic. She moves over to the one of the consul stations and begins pulling up the Wht_rb files. 

‘Lieutenant-commander? You know the station the best.’ 

Krennic licks his lips. Watches as the monitors flick back on. A few seconds and the screen comes back to life with full display of the battle which is going better than expected. 

‘Well?’ Tarkin turns towards the other man.

‘The power just went off.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Which was part of the program that Caruso left behind.’ 

‘But it’s back on.’ 

Krennic nods. He says yes, yes it’s back on. It’s probably all fine. I’m sure it’s fine. Yes, yes it’s fine. We’re all fine. 

Tarkin is not enthusiastic about the ‘it’s fine’ assessment from Krennic. He cannot trust the ‘it’s fine’ assessment from Krennic. Things have rarely been ‘fine’ before. 

An officer whispers, ‘should we evacuate?’ 

Tarkin sneers but does not respond. Krennic is tapping away furiously at his tablet and occasionally muttering to himself about rebels and trajectories and shields. 

But even with the shield off, Tarkin thinks, it would take an armada to get to the reactor core. They have half a fleet at most. And made up of what? Pirates, traitors, bastards, broken things the galaxy has spit out. Scum hardly worthy of the attention of the best of the empire. 

The lights dim again. This time a gentle pulsing before they come back on. 

‘I want an update on the lighting now,’ Tarkin says. 

An officer stands and comes over, ‘it looks like the power supply has been cut, sir.’ 

‘Physically?’ 

‘Disabled, rather, sir.’ 

‘Then rework it manually. There are manual backups for everything I trust.’ A pointed look towards Krennic who is ignoring him. 

‘Yes, sir, but it will take some time. In the meanwhile we have a choice on what we run on the backup generator. Air and lighting are a necessity, and the computers and blasters, but there’s the question of heat and plumbing and food storage and -’ 

‘Only essentials. How long will the backup last us?’ 

Krennic, ‘since we’re using it for the battle stations and for the shield between ship ports and open space not long enough to re-jig everything manually. Without heat we will last ten hours before we freeze. With heat, four maybe five before the backup power goes.’ 

‘This was  _ not _ thought out.’ 

‘Well someone kept pushing the finish date up.’ 

‘It had already exceeded its scheduled completion date, and overrun its budget.’ 

Krennic huffs, ‘all large scale building projects do. It’s the nature of envisioning the future. You’ve never managed such things before and so don’t understand. Anyway, governments never think far enough ahead.’ 

Tarkin dismisses the oft’ voiced complaints with a wave. This is not the time or place for such conversations. 

The same officer that had whispered the option of evacuation brings it up more forcefully, ‘should we evacuate sir?’ 

‘What? In our moment of triumph?’ 

On screen a TIE-fighter hits the back of a rebel ship causing it to flip and crash into the side of the Death Star. It is a silent death. The vacuum of space a distinctly cold and uncaring place. The damage to the station, however, is not inconsequential. 

Krennic ventures a comment, ‘without the shield, if the rebels were to run themselves into the exhaust port there is a chance they could trigger a chain reaction that would hit the power converter.’ 

The end result of that reaction is left hanging in the air. Tarkin has seen the Death Star explode a hundred times since Krennic has begun work on the exhaust port. He has seen it shatter into dust. He has seen it cleaved in half. He has seen it become a piecemeal asteroid belt. 

The station, the ships within it, himself - all nothing but a wasteland of stardust. Who had used that turn of phrase? A wasteland of stardust? Oh yes, Krennic. 

  
  
  


The rebels evidently have a single minded drive to effect as much damage to the exhaust port quadrant as possible. Even with concentrated fire power in that area and increased numbers of TIE-fighters they nethertheless persist. 

Krennic’s arms are folded, one hand pressed against his lips and he is watching the screen with furrowed brow. There is no more frantic calculations or maneuverings. Tarkin is not sure if he finds this a good sign. 

Into the tense silence of the bridge Adkin says, ‘Governor, the system-’

‘Back online?’ 

‘No sir. I don’t know what Caruso did but at this point we are going to have to go through every line of code.’ 

This shakes Krennic back into the present and he turns to Tarkin, ‘you have to make the call.’ 

‘I don’t follow, Lieutenant-commander.’ 

‘Evacuate. Even if we deflect the rebels we’ll freeze to death before the system is back online.’ 

Tarkin scoffs. ‘We have back up and full tech staff working on it. It will be resolved.’ 

A second rebel ship slams into the Death Star with greater force than any of the previous hits and the station is propelled forward. They feel it rock and it is the first time Krennic has ever felt vulnerable while on the station. 

‘Which way were we pushed?’ Tarkin asks. A graphic is pulled up. ‘Towards the planet.’ 

Krennic whispers, ‘no.’ 

‘Do we have enough power to turn the thrusters on to stop us?’ 

An officer shakes his head. 

The movement is slow but constant. There being no friction in space there is nothing to stop an object from moving forward once it has been pushed. And they are being pushed, whether intentional or an unintended result of the focus on the exhaust port it does not matter. There is a planet. They will crash into it. 

Krennic can see it. His beautiful battle station colliding into a planet, each mass consuming the other, rending the other open and vulnerable. 

He turns to Tarkin, ‘you need to make the call. There are a million people on here. We have to evacuate  _ now. _ ’ 

Tarkin is staring at the screen as the TIE-fighters continue to push back the rebel ships. They are like biting flies, Tarkin thinks. Midges. Small and a nuisance. Something to be exterminated.

Another rebel ship is destroyed. Tarkin glances over at Krennic who watches with deep satisfaction. 

This still does not resolve the issue of the planet and the power. It is detestable that such a decision must be made but the former-director is not wrong. 

‘All but combat crew are to evacuate. We will remain until the end.’ 

An officer quickly fires off the order and returns to his station. 

Krennic is envisioning all the ways the Death Star could die. And oh he knows that all glory begins decay upon fruition of creation. He knows that all marvels end in time. Become hidden wonders in an expansive desert land where people look upon the ruins of colossal monuments and think, Those who were here had once been great. But this is all with time. With deep pressure of the ever continuing present. Not  _ now _ . Not while he  _ watches _ . 

For himself, Krennic does not care if he is to die on board the Death Star. It would be a glorious way to perish. Something for the books or plaques next to buildings he has constructed. If he is to die in this moment at least it is with the Death Star. An architect does not outlive his creations, that is not the natural order of things. 

He has memories of Scarif. They come back when he least expects them to and this is one of those moments. He had thought them past. Done. Finished. New things had occurred since then and his life full of novel events. But there are the beaches which are soft white sand, stunning water, more green than anything on Lexrul his red, rocky planet with some tropical forest clinging to the sides of continents, hugging water. Nothing as wide and unending as it is on Scarif or had been on Alderaan. All those decimated lands. 

Krennic assumes that Tarkin had been standing exactly where he is now when he gave the order to fire. 

The Death Star tremors again. Fleeting. They continue their steady pace planet-ward with dropping temperature. 

  
  
  


The eventual retreat of the rebels is met with cheers from the bridge. Although it is not strictly a victory for the empire it is not necessarily a loss, either. Yet, at least. 

‘Any chance of the system coming back on line in the next four hours?’ Tarkin asks as the TIE-fighters chase off the one or two remaining rebels. 

Adkin shakes her head grimly, ‘no, sir. If we have ten maybe. But we don’t.’ 

‘We need to exert enough force planet side to propel us away from it. What fuel do we have? If there is a large enough explosion on that side we will damage the station but it will work as a thruster and stop us.’ 

‘The fuel for the Death Star came from the reactor.’ Krennic says. ‘There’s no loose fuel that can be maneuvered into a makeshift bomb. And even then, it’d have to be powerful. It took ten, eleven high speed impacts to get us rolling in this direction. And there is still the issue of the temperature.’ 

On the screen the planet is large and orange. It’s a gas-based one with limited tangible core. The clouds are pearly white then dip into deep red. It is very present. Already the gravity of the Death Star is attracting the highest clouds of the planet to lick outwards towards them. 

Krennic grabs Tarkin’s arm, ‘come on. We can’t salvage this.’ 

Tarkin shakes him off, ‘you are not in charge.’ 

‘This isn’t going down with the ship. This is pointlessly dying in a planetary collision.’ 

Tarkin does not think it worth correcting Krennic’s views on what ‘going down with the ship’ means. He does not wish to flee. If this is how he dies then he will die in such a way as to be remembered. 

It is both surprising and not surprising at all that Krennic has some hidden strength. The Lieutenant-commander grabs his arm, snarls that the entire bridge is empty, and yanks him towards the door, the hall, out and down towards an escape shuttle. Tarkin attempts to free his arm but Krennic grabs his other hand and hauls him ever forward. 

‘I will knock you out if I have to,’ Krennic snaps. 

‘You couldn’t if you tried.’ 

They are arguing down stairs since the elevators are not to be trusted on partial power. 

‘I will roll you down these stairs, governor.’ 

‘Really?’ Tarkin twists suddenly and is free from Krennic who says that he wishes it hadn’t come to this. Tarkin feels his back hit the wall and his shoulder flare up in pain. Krennic puts his blaster back in its holster. 

‘I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.’ 

Krennic is then in his face and peering at the blaster shot saying that he is going to be just fine as soon as they’re off the Death Star, and Tarkin finds himself once again being manhandled down stairs and into a hanger. 

‘You are in such trouble,’ Tarkin spits as Krennic pushes him into a waiting shuttle. 

‘You’ll thank me later. Power up, lieutenant Adkin, oh Linden you’re here too. Good. Let’s go.’ 

  
  


Through a window of the escape shuttle Krennic and Tarkin watch as the Death Star and the planet collide and collapse against each other. A moon and a planet dying amidst stardust. 


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Than you so much for all of you who have stuck with me in the long haul that has been this frickin' story. It means so much each kudo and comment and message over on Tumblr and also every hit for the readers who leave without a trace. I appreciate it all. 
> 
> <3

Uniformity within a system is, statistically, the most likely outcome. Entropy. Nothing enjoys that process. They are heading away from the death of a star and planet and towards Coruscant. Minutes ago they had been on a system collapsing in upon itself; what a wondrous and horrid thing to witness. 

‘Wilken?’ Krennic asks. 

The Death Star and the planet appear to be fusing when really they are devouring. Snakes wrapped around each other baking in desert heat. Crickets torn open to inspect the monstrous innards. Everything comes together and blends into oneness, in the end. Heat death forces unity. 

‘Left on there, I assume.’ 

A spurt of gaseous cloud jets out, lays itself upon the upper part of the battle station. Krennic does not know what he is feeling but he knows it is a great deal. His stomach is hollow, his lungs ash. 

‘Good.’ 

Tarkin’s reflection nods. 

What is uniformity within the empire? Krennic knows what the political view is, what the military expectations are but in a system so vast as an entire galaxy that is expanding ever outwards and will eventually kill itself with its own compression into, ah, uniformity what does that mean for them? 

He has not grasped at such existential thoughts since he was young and working on final portfolio projects for the Futures Program and had time. 

Now? There is half a lifetime’s work dying before him. A hollowness within his chest. Tarkin, bleeding son of a bitch, still next to him with bandaged shoulder and sour expression. Adkin, not a bleeding anything, piloting them away. Linden, not much of a thought for Krennic, doing something useful he assumes. Nial and Esma not knowing anything about what their son gets up to in his work but wanting him home once a year no matter that they no longer speak the same language. Now? He does not know. 

‘The emperor?’ He asks, for once disinterested. 

‘Not going to be pleased.’ 

‘Hm.’ 

Tarkin breaths out, ‘Adleraan.’ 

‘Alderaan.’ 

‘Was that the butterfly?’ 

Krennic shrugs. He cannot say what was the moment that triggered the avalanche that led to this. 

Tarkin, ‘It’d be fitting if it was.’ 

‘Yeah, something like that.’ 

They draw steadily away. Death Star becoming dimmer and dimmer until Adkin twists around and says, ‘should we go into hyper-drive, sir?’ 

Krennic shakes his head as Tarkin says, ‘yes, Lieutenant.’ 

Krennic turns sharply, the first he has looked away, and Tarkin says, ‘there will be other projects.’ 

And Krennic says, ‘but none like that one.’ 

A shudder as the shuttle amps up to hyper-drive and then the Death Star becomes nothing. The moon that neither waxed nor waned gone. Inert. 

‘No,’ Tarkin agrees. ‘None like that one.’ He turns from the window and towards the front of the shuttle, ‘come on then, new things await us. You were never one for inertia. I believe you lectured me on that fact.’ 

‘Did I? Oh yes, I was on a lot of pain medication. Point remains, though.’ 

‘Indeed, the point remains.’ 

Krennic reaches into a back pocket and pulls out a small flask, ‘pocket of whiskey?’ He takes a swallow and offers the other half to Tarkin who accepts. Then, because there is little else to do, he fishes for a fag and a light. 

 

 

They are nearing Coruscant, though still hours way, and with it their future. The emperor Krennic can only imagine his fury. Twenty-odd years and billions in budget to be pushed from their grasp so quickly. His chest hollows out further, stars knows how, as he considers this view and thinks perhaps he and Tarkin should have stayed on the Death Star. 

He determines that his hand will not shakes as he smokes. Tarkin leans over and takes the cigarette and breathes out smoke. Krennic does not know how to apologize for their living when they clearly should have died. He takes out another fag and lights it. The uncertainty hangs in the air and Tarkin is watching their steady process forward with grim determination. 

‘We should be dead,’ Krennic states. 

‘Yes.’ 

‘My fault we’re not.’ 

‘Quite.’ 

‘You shouldn’t get the blame for that.’ 

‘It will be what it will be.’ 

‘Still.’ 

Tarkin snubs out his smoke. Krennic cannot read his expression. Krennic can never read Tarkin’s expressions but that fact does not take away from the experience. Krennic thinks, I never know what he is thinking. I never know how to speak with him. We speak different languages. How can you translate yourself across such divides? 

  
  
  


Their trajectory and speed is a weight on the base of Krennic’s stomach for all his yearning to be noticed by the emperor this is not how he wanted it to be. He marvels at Tarkin’s calm. But then, the Grand Moff and the emperor are well known to each other. 

The recent past cascades into the present. Old conversations come flooding back and expand as the present becomes future. Future is a neverwhere. It can never exist. The past only exists because it creates a reasonable way for memory to be understood. Krennic shudders. Time is a flat circle. He dislikes it. 

Krennic turns to Tarkin and asks in as concentrated a manner as possible, ‘are we still on the same team?’ 

Tarkin raises an eyebrow. Krennic shrugs, as if to say, Reasonable question. 

‘Temporary stasis, I think is what I called it not so long ago.’ 

Time expands and compresses. How long since Erso first betrayed them? How long since Scarif? Go further back, how long since the idea of the Death Star was conceived and scribbled onto a napkin? Everything feels shattered.  

A sigh, ‘Oh yes,’ the Grand Moff says, ‘we are still there.’ 

Krennic nods. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘all is not lost. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I think.’ 

‘We’re long past that, Lieutenant-commander.’ Tarkin’s voice deep resignation. 

‘No hope for a promotion anytime soon?’ 

‘No. None at all.’ 

Krennic wrinkles his nose but says that the current status is workable. The future is bright, surely, and there are nebula and stars millions of years old and the universe, cold and hot and unfathomable and it is a marvel in and of itself that they are here. Tarkin mutters that he is verging on the maudlin. 

This is perhaps true, Krennic owns. The situation calls for bittersweetness. They are being bittersweet are they not? He does not know how to do these things properly. Tarkin does not reply. Krennic assumes that this means the Grand Moff, too, does not know how to do these things properly. For all their knowledge, lived experience, which between the two is a great amount of both in very different areas, they cannot manage this.

Taking a seat Krennic says, ‘tell me more about your pirate hunting days. Or Eriadu. Or ships. Or your family.’  

Tarkin considers the blanket of darkness illuminated by those millenia old stars Krennic is so fond of and thinks it telling that space smells of gunpowder and iron because that is what you must be made of to survive. A memory surfaces of a smuggling racket from years ago, he thinks the story will suffice for Krennic’s curiosity. What harm is there in  _ this _ present when tomorrow it could shatter to stardust?

 

.   .   .   .

.  .  .

.  .

.


End file.
